Saturday 02-20-10 thru Tuesday 10-24-10

After breakfast Saturday morning at the Adip Hotel Yukubu picked me up and we went to the Lutheran Church of Christ (LCCN) compound in Jimeta adjacent to the Jimeta Cathedral. This is where I stayed last year in Elisabeth’s Mission house. Yakubu Bulama, the LCCN Projects Coordinator and my main contact has his office in her living room. Elisabeth retired in 2004 and returned to Denmark after over 30 years in Nigeria. She comes back each year working on writing a history of the church and trying put together an updated photo album of all the pastors. She will be chasing them down at the National Convention. I think she is working just as hard in retirement as when she lived here.

She is living in her house now so they have cleaned the other Mission house for me. No one has lived here for two years. We looked at it last year and decided it would not be worth the effort to clean up.

Two women have been working for two days. It is built of mud bricks covered in concrete. The foundation or walls have settled in a few places making cracks at most of the doors. Much of the concrete has fallen off the mud. The women continued to clean after I arrived. Moving dirt from one place to another. The little boy who last year screamed and ran away from me just stared on Saturday. He is about two and rarely wears clothes. Today we played soccer on Elisabeth’s front porch for about a half hour with two of his older sister. He had a small rubber soccer ball. At first he would barely push it towards me. After a few minutes he kicking it pretty hard for as tiny as he is. He has the cough and runny nose you see with many of the kids here. Burning trash and more Chinese motorcyles bilging blue smoke than mosquitos make the air hard on young and old lungs.

We had a carpenter work on fixing window screens and an electrician reconnected the house to the power grid. Jimeta had power for two hours on last Tuesday and two hours on Sunday night. We had the electrician install a manual generator switch over. I am hoping that I can convince Bishop Edward to connect the house to the big generator at the Jimeta Cathedral. They only need to run about a hundred feet for wire from the well house. It would be a lot cheaper than buying a small generator. Something is going on at the Cathedral almost every night so you get a couple hours. That will be enough to cool down the large bottles of water in the freezer. I am told that this house is connected to the churches borehole and water supply. Unfortunately, the pump is not functional. I have two 60 liter barrels and buy water from a street vendors (100 naira $0.67 for 120 liters). I buy bottled water to drink 750 naira $5) for 12 1.5 liter bottles.

The refrigerator works when we have power and the gas stove may be able to be repaired. I bought a pot and 2 plastic place settings. At the “New Ultra Modern Market”. Since my first visit in 2006 the market has been under construction. I have never seen anyone actually working there. Every year a different contractor has been paid to compete it and has stolen the money. I was surprised when I went inside. It looks like it has been in use for years. The storm water grates are so weak that most are busted from cars driving over them.Now on Tuesday it has started in the afternoon we had three hours. Elisabeth said this is the most for a long time. I told her they knew I was in town and added power for me.

Elisabeth just stopped over. Her car has a flat tire. Since power came on at 3 PM we are going to take advantage of power until 5 pm then take her tire off and get it repaired. I told her I was on my way over to see her when the power came on. Since she is always around and power is rarely around I decided to recharge the batteries in my computer and write this blog while seating under the ceiling fan.

I have designed a solar cooker. Unfortunately, I probably won’t have the time to build it for 2 weeks. The rest of this week is the Annual National Convention and next week I will be in the bush visiting the Bali region in neighboring Taraba State. Last year my simple box cooker made of cardboard and aluminum foil cooked rice in 2 hours. This year I am going to try an octagonal sort of parabolic cooker made of cardboard and aluminum foil.

I will be sending this blog from the City Wide internet café. It is about a kilometer from the house. Last night I hope on a motorcycle drive for 50 naira $0.33). Hospital road is full of potholes. One of the worst in Jimeta. He as he hit pot holes his light would go out. He would reach up and hit it until it started again. He was the fastest driver I have ridden with. I do not take these rides often. The streets swarm with them. Chinese 125cc motorcycles leaving a plume of blue smoke behind. The Governor of Taraba State outlawed them in his capital Jalingo. They moved here.