Painting and proposed projects

Monday 19 March 2012 

Major water stains

Today was another painting day.  Well, the second part of the day was painting and the first part was trying to figure out how to seal some water damage to the ceiling before we wasted a lot of paint.  Since there is no product like Kilz’s available or anything like it, we tried using some of Valentine’s hairspray, that did not work; we tried WD40 and that only partially worked; we finally asked one of the yard boys to get some spray paint when he was running errands in town for Simon and low and behold, they actually had some spray paint at $11 a can.  It seems to work so we repainted Simon’s room ceiling and were able to seal a few spots where there was water stains.  The real test will come tomorrow in Sue’s ceiling as there is some major water stains.  We finished our four hours of painting by spraying her water spots with the can of paint and will give it a try tomorrow.  That will be our main task for Tuesday, finish getting the second coat on all the latex painted ceilings.  Francois is suppose to pick up 16 liters of oil based paint for the lounge and dining room ceilings and we will start working on those mid week, IF he is able to find the paint. 

Tuesday 20 March 2012 

Few more spots to cover on Sue's ceiling

In regards to using the hairspray as a sealer, it was a good bet, but it was a pump action bottle, thus water based, versus being a pressurized spray which is probably hydrocarbon based and would have sealed better.  The spray paint worked reasonably well, but still have a few spots with water stain burn through… we are doing the best we can with what we have to operate with, just like the locals.

The temps during the day are in the high 80’s or low 90’s but the humidity is high, or so it seems.  We don’t see many weather reports, occasionally at night, if the power is on and the TV is on.  We are 6 degrees south of the equator, so the temps remain fairly constant, but there is a rainy and a dry season.  We are supposed to be nearing the end of the rainy season, but they have not gotten nearly the normal amounts of rain, thus the water shortage.  The dry season is actually the “winter” months, with less rain and temps a few degrees cooler, both day and night.  The locals are worried that without the rains to fill the cisterns, it will be hard to find water towards the end of the dry season.  Always challenges.

Classroom across the street

Curious outside the classroom

In the afternoon the local District Superintendent collected us for a tour of some of the proposed projects in this district, all in the immediate vicinity of the compound.  We saw two churches, and a school complex that need relocating due to major erosion problems which will one of these days collapse several of the buildings, and another guest house project that the DS wants to do.  Rather than try to fix the large erosion problem and fight Mother Nature, the structures are in the downhill position, it will probably be less costly to move these operations to other available land in the Methodist area by the compound.  The school classrooms are very small, poorly ventilated and house about 65 children per classroom. 

Emergency room at Kananga II clinic

Proud new Mom at maternity clinic

We also saw the Kananga II Clinic, the local UMC clinic and maternity facility.  It is both the UMC and a national reference clinic in Kananga Province. There are no local NGO relationships at this time.  The clinic has many needs among them: roofing repair on all buildings, a water reservoir to provide an adequate supply of water, plumbing in the buildings, a consistent supply of essential drugs, medical supplies, equipment and materials, a generator, and an ambulance.  They are doing the best they can with what they have to work with, but it would seem that with a lot of planning and fund raising on our end, many improvements could be made for some reasonable costs.  We will be given more information about this by the District Superintendent. 

Outside the children come to see the strangers

Wednesday 21 March 2012

It's raining, it's pouring...

Simon & Jim keeping watch on the rain

All’s not lost.  We did get rain just after lunch and it rained really hard for almost an hour, but not nearly enough.  We collected three and a half 55 gallon drums of water, but the cistern only got a foot out of a capacity of 10 feet, in depth.  Just need more rain or they will be having a really hard time when the dry season starts in May. 

This afternoon Jim cleaned mildew off of the ceilings in the lounge and dining room in preparation for painting tomorrow.  It was a lot cooler after the long rain shower, but still very hot up on the scaffolding. Sue tried to get up on the scaffolding to give a hand at scrubbing the ceilings, but she just did not feel comfortable climbing up and then working above her head on an oil drum/plastic trunk tower.  It does take some practice to feel safe under those conditions and we decided that it was better for her to be on the ground handing up refreshed, Clorox/water rags so Jim could do the cleaning.  We completed the chore in about 90 minutes.  

It looks like Jacques is stuck in Lubumbashi until sometime early next week as the part(s) he needs for the plane have not come in yet.   We are just thankful that the broken plane adventure was not part of our travels out bush… we could still be sitting at the remote UMC Mission waiting for someone to come peddling up on a bike with the offending part… This is just a tough place to make any solid plans especially if it involves equipment with moving parts or that requires petrol or electricity to function properly.  It is just so hard to imagine daily life under these conditions, even when you are experiencing them on a daily basis. 

Thursday 22 March 2012 

Lounge (living room) ready for ceiling painting

Another day of painting.  We got both the lounge and the dining room ceilings done in oil based paints.  Oil based painting is a much bigger hassle as you have to clean everything with turpentine, which they do not have here, so we had to use kerosene which leaves more of a smell and a residue on your skin after you clean the brushes and roller.  Oh well, we are flexible.  

We will paint Simon’s room tomorrow while he is off at Kole, a remote Catholic Mission.  He tried to fly there two days ago with a plane loaded with tools and six bags of cement, but had to turn back due to a severe thunderstorm.  He was worried that he would not have enough fuel, but Jacques had some and authorized him to get what Simon needed for his trip.  He left early this morning as the weather started off way above minimums for Visual Flight Rules (VFR).  It was a good thing he left when he did as another thunder storm came into the area around noon, but did not produce any rain, just a lot of thunder and lightning. 

We have to do some patching of a lot of holes and cracks in his room, and the material they have here has to be mixed, applied, allowed to dry for 90 minutes and then sanded.  We’ll hit that part early and then will repaint the lounge ceiling while the compound dries.  The lounge ceiling did not come out as well as the dining room for some unknown reason, so we’ll repaint it while we wait to get into Simon’s room.   The room has not been painted in many years and was used by one of Jacques sons so there were a lot of holes and “stuff” on the wall.  It will be nice to get this room up to the standards of the other two bedrooms. 

Valentine said there will be a team coming in from Penn/Delaware UMC Conference in August so they will probably be the first to actually utilize the renovated guest house.  They are bringing some medical personnel.  Jacques will fly them out to several of the UMC Missions we visited.  We’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that we had a part in providing a decent guest house for visiting volunteer teams. 

Friday 23 March 2012

Ladder & the cistern, we'll use it in the afternoon

Sue painting in Simon's room

Got Simon’s room painted, but only after a false start trying to do the final coat on the lounge ceiling. We had set up for painting before breakfast.  While we were at breakfast, the masons arrived to work on the cistern at the guest house.  Francois got the extension ladder out of the lounge and gave it to the masons to allow them to get into the 10 foot deep hole.  They did not want to give it back so to avoid an international incident; we shifted to plan B and started painting Simon’s room just before lunch.  We were not at a good stopping point when lunch was called and even Valentine came to fetch us.  When she saw what we had accomplished and how good it looked, she did not fuss at us, but praised the great job we were doing.  She was amazed at what a coat of paint could do to the really raggedy room that once belonged to one of her three boys.  

Valentine recalled the day in 1999 when she was shot by a rebel who had invaded the compound and fired an AK-47 at her through one of the bedroom windows.  Luckily, the bullet ricocheted off one of the security bars, passed through her hand and embedded in the bedroom wall.  She ran to her son’s room, the one we are painting and pulled her son down under the bed at the same time screaming for help.  A neighbor came from behind her compound, armed, and the rebel fled.  The bullet hole through the glass, the nick in the security bar and the pot mark in the wall are still in my bedroom to this day. Daily there are reminders of some of the crisis these folks have lived through in the last 20-25 years. 

Saturday 24 March 2012 

We got the second coat of paint on the lounge ceiling today.  It looks great!  The lounge and dining room ceilings are now a glossy white instead of yellow and are a nice contrast to the walls that will be Broken White, a lighter shade of yellow. 

Floor clean-up

The floor in the lounge, dining room, hallway and vestibule are cream and red tiles.  The baseboards are red tile.  Cleaning up paint spills on the floor and baseboards is a challenge with kerosene – getting enough of it and the film it leaves on the floor.  We’re becoming adept at making do with what we can get. 

Bowed in cistern wall

Brick and mortar separating

More cistern wall building this morning.  The sides are getting up to ground level.  Mid morning Jim noticed a side wall bowing inward, as one of the mason’s helpers, at the mason’s instruction, piled earth back into the hole beside the wall, causing unacceptable pressure against the newly built wall.  In some spots on the inside of the cistern, the bricks and mortar were pulling apart.  Jim, with Valentine’s help, talked with the mason about possible cave in, the need to rebuild the wall and remove the dirt again until much later in the project.  After much talk, the wall was rebuilt. Disaster averted!

Guest house renovations begin

Monday 12 March 2012

Decisions - junk or store it back in the garage

Busy day.  We started on some of the renovation work at the guest house.  First we cleaned out the garage so we have a place to put the stuff we move from the bedrooms as we start painting the ceilings tomorrow.  It seems that several missionaries have used the guest house as a temporary/long term storage for all kinds of things.  Most of this was sorted and much thrown out.  The missionaries have long since departed,  some literally, so with Valentine's guidance, we pitched a lot of junk. 

Jim, Sue, Major

Just before lunch, Valentine returned to the guest house with a man in uniform.  She said the local authorities wanted to see us.  We thought this would be a repeat of a visit from local officials in Diengenga, when they took down on a piece of paper our passport data and information about our visit to the DRC.  But no, Valentine was pulling our leg.  The Protestant chaplain at a local military base,  a Major in the DR Congo Army, dropped by to visit Valentine and wanted to meet the Americans.  The Major and Jim bonded over ranks and military matters, with Valentine translating.

The cistern walls construction starts today

The barrel is just about empty

We finally got some rain this afternoon, but even though this is still the rainy season, they have not had the usual rainfall for being in the equatorial belt.  The cistern at Jacques house is almost dry and they are  having to buy water in 55 gallon drums and haul it to the house from one of only several wells in the neighborhood.  Tough life, even when it comes to the basics.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Mother hen and eight new chicks

No daylight savings time to worry about on this end.  Just the men’s choir at the local UMC across the lane. They start practicing each morning around 0500 and sometimes there must be an early prayer service.  Sue says she hears what sounds like a hubbub and chattering intermixed with the singing coming through her window where Jim only gets the singing in his window.  Additionally, there are all the animals, chickens, guinea hens and other assorted fowl making early morning noises.  Jim turns in with his ear plugs in so he misses the main noises during the night.  Sue plugs into her MP3 player and listens to an audio book, with a faint chorus of singing a distant background.

Scaffolding kluge

Jim figured out how to reach the 10 foot ceilings with no step ladder available. We will be using two 55 gallon drums, two foot lockers, a 12 foot extension ladder running between the barrels/footlockers and then put walk boards on the ladder.  It will be cumbersome to move around the rooms, but it will fit in all the bedrooms and will allow slow, but safe progress. 

Jim painting in Sue's room

We started the painting today.  The Congolese OSHA probably would have said we had over kill in the scaffolding set up, but it worked and we got Sue’s room’s ceiling painted.  The major problems were the quality of the brushes is terrible and the water stains from a previously leaking roof have burned through multiple layers of paint.  We don’t have a decent trim brush, and painter’s tape.  We’d love to find something like Kilz for sealing the water stains, but one trip in to town today by Francois did not unearth any sealer.  We’ll move to the second bedroom tomorrow, Simon’s.  He just returned today from Tshumbe, a Catholic mission, so we will have to work around him. 

Thursday 15 March 2012

Kananga "super market"

Yesterday we painted the ceiling in Simon’s room.  Today was a rest day, after three days of hard work, in the heat and humidity and some dehydration for Jim with leg cramps.  We did make a trip into town with Valentine and Francois to return filler and buy a putty knife, better paint brushes, a stiff scrub  brush for laundry washing and a few other items.  We stopped at both of the super markets.  The “super markets” consist of one room built into a gas station (one of the three working in town) that had maybe four or five rows of short shelves.  There was an assortment of goods, but not much.  The biggest surprise - we purchased two Coke Lights for about $1.25 a piece.  These are the first sodas we have had since leaving Joburg.   We saved them for later tonight – a treat to anticipate.  We also stopped to pay the electric bill, $25/month for about two hours at night, every other day.

Chinese curbing installation

Along  the road into downtown Kananga, crews are installing curbs and will install sidewalks.  The Chinese are funding  this work.  Any construction we saw in Kinshasa was the same story, the Chinese are paying for the building.  In Zimbabwe and Botswana we saw modern hospitals that had been built by the Chinese.

Friday 16 March 2012

Hallway painting

Another long day painting.  We got Jim’s room ceiling and the long hallway ceiling painted.  All the work involves working off the scaffolding since the ceilings are 10 foot with rectangular vents at the top to allow air circulation and to allow hot air to rise and escape.  Makes for a lot of climbing up and down, but we are getting it done.  Looks like we will have to put a second coat on the ceilings in Simon’s bedroom and Sue’s bedroom.   One coat does not seem to be covering very well. 

Sue painting "the boys" bathroom

Tomorrow we’ll paint the vestibule ceiling and the ceiling in Jim and Simon’s bathroom.

We’re working on blog posts for our weekend/mission travels.  Jim did some of the writing this time and Sue is selecting the pictures, but it is mating the two together and getting it posted that takes time, especially as the connection is slow with 4 computers contending for bandwidth.

Back in Kananga

Thursday 8 March 2012

Making friends? Jim on Kindle Fire, Markus on ipad

Soon after returning to Kananga from our flying adventures and visits to three missions, a visitor came to stay for several days.  Markus Wolfmaier is a new missionary pilot who is a candidate for an upcoming pilots slot with the United Methodist Aviation Ministry (UMAM) http://UMAviationMinistries.org here in the DR Congo.  Each of the three Episcopal areas in the DRC has an aviation ministry.  Air transportation is essential, as distances are great and roads are few.  The planes carry medical supplies, critically ill patients, as well as transporting missionaries, volunteers and church leaders.  Markus is a German citizen who grew up in Sweden, the child of missionaries.  For the past 10 years he has lived in Tennessee.   He went to Moody's Bible College and then to their Missionary Pilots and Mechanics school.  He is on an orientation tour of the Congo and if the job is offered and he accepts after this visit, he will be coming back here for a 3.5 year tour.  He is staying in Jacques' house for a couple of days and then Jacques will be flying him or Markus flying and Jacques observing, as they travel down to Lubumbashi for a meeting.  Jacques will be gone a week.

Friday 9 March 2012

Cistern hole ready for rebar

Getting rebar ready

Concrete blocks awaiting use in the cistern

The guest house where we are staying and that we are renovating for future volunteer teams will have a brand new cistern.  Yesterday the cistern hole was re-dug out after the rain last week.  A concrete floor will be poured with rebar reinforcing, then concrete block walls will be built.  The blocks were handmade right here in the compound while we were visiting the missions.  The concrete blocks need rain to cure and make them strong, but rain is in short supply just now.  The Akasa’s roof water tank is empty and their cistern doesn’t have much water.  Water is bought in 55 gallon drums almost daily right now.

Virginie preparing cassava

Cassava plants are all over the compound

Carrying cassava home

We eat cassava at most noon meals, the main meal of the day.  It is very tasty, a bit of a bite the way it is cooked.  It grows all over the compound and is gathered almost daily and prepared on the tin roofed patio, just off the kitchen where all the meal preparations and cooking happens.   All over Kananga we see women with large bowls on their heads, full of cassava, being brought home for dinner.

We are very near the Kananga airport.  Planes land and take off just overhead.  As they pass overhead you can see the planes shadow on a wall or the ground.  There is not a lot of air traffic but you know when one is near.  The CAA flight from Kinshasa comes in 3 days a week, Monday, Thursday and Saturday.  There are some cargo flight, Congolese military flights, UN aircraft, and small planes such as the Cessna 206 we flew last week.

Compound walls

The children follow

Homes on a hillside along the way

We took a walk with Markus this afternoon, down a dust road that passes beyond the two house walled compound where we live.  The road is filled with people walking and sitting outside their homes.  Three white folks create a lot of interest.  We say bonjour or bonsoir; they often say hello in English by saying good morning, no matter the time of day and we reply in kind.  They try to speak to us in French, but we have to say Je ne parle pas français, parle anglais?  Very few folks speak English.  But no matter, the children especially just follow along behind us happily chatting among themselves, observing us, seemingly fascinated.  We feel like pied pipers.

Otetela, Chaluba languages church

Down this road are 2 Methodist churches.  Emanating from each, every other day or so during the week, generally starting about 11 pm, choirs practice and services are conducted.  One church conducts services in French; the other conducts the services in two local languages, Otetela and Tshiluba.  We have spent a Sunday morning at each, shepherded to the front as honored guests by our local host.

Saturday 10 March 2012

Rebar laying

Block delivery

The workmen are laying the cistern floor rebar this morning and concrete blocks are delivered from the main house to the guest house. 

Shelling peanuts

Meanwhile Valentine and friends are shelling peanuts on the kitchen patio, beginning to make peanut butter.  The peanuts are laid out on a large tarp to dry.  Later the peanuts will be mashed with a large pestle about a foot tall.  

Drying peanuts

Over by the chicken coop 3 young men are cutting orange palm fruit down and eating a bit as they go.

UN helicopter near the hanger

Unloading the oil drum at the hanger

Fueling the plane

Pilot Jacques

Markus & Jim discussing planes and flying

After lunch, Jacques, Francois, Markus, Jim and Sue went to the hanger.  Markus and Jacques are flying to Lubumbashi tomorrow morning and the Cessna needs aviation fuel.  The UN helicopter was in the field near the hanger, looking important and ready to go.   Avgas was brought from the compound to the hanger in the SUV.  During the November 2011 DRC elections unrest, Jacques moved avgas from the hanger to the compound.  This was the final barrel to be transported back from the compound.  The fuel is pumped into both wings

Bonjour

The market

Come again to Kananga

Phew, we made it back

Wanting some exercise, Jim and Sue walked back from the hanger to the guest house, about 3 miles, on a hot DRC afternoon.  We passed many folks walking, a market area with a dusty haze, and a borehole, finally arriving at the farewell gate that starts the ride out to the airport.  We walked the distance in ¾ hours, glad to be back.

Borehole, lining up for water

No time to rest.  We went to see the house Markus will live in should he be offered the pilot’s job and accept it.  The house is about ¾ mile from Jacques, with living room, dining room, kitchen and three bedrooms, with a small courtyard in front.  Across the street is a borehole, very convenient for getting water supply.  As everywhere else in Kananga, power is delivered every other night from about 8 – 10 pm.

Sunday 11 March 2012

Valentine making pancakes

Markus

 After a breakfast of pancakes, Jacques and Markus flew to Lubumbashi this morning.  The 3 Congo UMAM pilots will be there with their planes for a safety inspection with a mission aviation safety association.  It is also an opportunity for the 3 DRC aviation programs and for Markus to assess each other for a fit.  If Markus joins UMAM, he will be the 4^th pilot, flying for all 3 programs.

Sue, Markus, Jacques, Jim

Concrete and rebar

The cistern concrete floor was poured today.