As we have mentioned before, we haul water in order to have water at the house. Elder Jones hauls the water and then it is put into the large black containers that you see in the picture below. This particular tank is the one that is elevated so that it creates water pressure. It was leaking so it needed to be repaired. A "plumber" had come and supposedly fixed it. It still leaked quite badly so we asked one of the guys who does a lot of varied jobs for us if he was afraid to climb up the ladder and make the necessary repairs. Now you will note that first of all the ladder doesn't have a solid piece of wood that extends from the bottom of the ladder to the top. It has two pieces of wood tied together. The rungs are also homemade. Once you get to the top you have to sit on the little ledge. Now in order to make the repairs with the PVC pipe, you heat the larger piece of PVC pipe and then insert the smaller piece in order to make the connect. Markus (the repair guy) builds a little fire on top of the elevated ledge and proceeds to make the necessary repairs. It was quite amazing to watch--although I must admit I couldn't watch him go up or down the ladder. It was quite frightening to me.
The next pictures are of some of the elders here in Sierra Leone. Elder Tabi (who is now serving in Liberia) and Elder Quoibiedah. Elder Quoibiedah is one of the elders that we get the chance to go out visiting with on Sundays. He is from Liberia. Because he is from Liberia, he will only serve here in Sierra Leone. We have a few elders that are from one of the two countries that comprise our mission. They will not serve in their home city and most of the time not in their own country. The mission tries to maintain half African elders and half American elders. They work pretty well together and learn from the talents of each other.
Here is Elder Quoibiedah again with his companion Jonathan Kamara. Brother Kamara is from Bo (one of the cities in Sierra Leone). He is a branch missionary. When we were a little short of missionaries, Brother Kamara was brought to Sierra Leone to serve with Elder Quoibiedah for six weeks. Brother Kamara will soon be Elder Kamara. He leaves on Friday, June 19th, to go to Ghana to the MTC and then will serve in the Kenya Nairobi mission. He is a great young man. We will miss him.
For Preparation Day this week, the 3 couples went on a little beach excursion trip. We stopped at a number of the local beaches. The beaches themselves are beautiful. You won't find any more beautiful beaches in the world than in Sierra Leone. The problem is in getting to them. The roads are horrible--except for one fairly decent road. You can only get to the fairly decent road by going over some pretty horrible roads. We didn't understand how such a nice road could exist when so many of the roads near Freetown are so bad. You definitely wouldn't want to travel the roads if you had back or neck problems. There is a lot of jarring and bumping.
At one of the stops along the road, we saw this woman and her daughter. You will notice that the woman is carrying eggs. This is a very typical mode of transporting the eggs to sell. She will walk along and people will stop her and purchase their eggs from her. I find it amazing that she can carry the eggs and travel uphill and downhill over rough terrain and not drop a single egg. Almost everything is transported in this manner--cement bags, flip-flops in plastic tubs, material, 7 foot poles, rocks in headpans, material, water. You name it you will see someone carrying it around on their head. Their necks and backs have got to be so strong--not to mention their sense of balance.
We also came upon the scene of some fishermen. They had just hauled in their net full of fish. People were gathered around to get the fish to sell. They would get the amount of fish they wanted, sprinkle it with salt, and then sprinkle it with sand. They would then mix the fish, salt and sand all together. I would assume they were trying to preserve the freshness of the fish.
We just had to take a "snap" of this little girl. The children here are so cute. They love to have their "snaps" taken. They will pose while you snap the picture. Then they want to see themselves.
You can tell from our beach attire that we didn't get to enjoy the water itself much. Elder Jones did roll up his pants and walked in the water a little. It was so beautiful. As we looked off in the directions toward the mountains, you could see that it was raining. But where we were was warm and serene.
Since there are no fast food places around--at least that we would feel comfortable eating at, we took along a lunch. Each couple brought their own, which is what we do most days. The bread is pretty good here as long as you don't think about where it's been or how it got delivered to where you purchased the bread. Generally Elder Jones goes down to the local little "zinc" store every morning after the bread man has made his delivery. Now you must understand that the bread is delivered in the trunk of a car. The trunk has a layer of plastic so that the bread is not lying directly on the carpet in the trunk. The shop keeper will go out and collect in a container--maybe a box (a carton) or a plastic bucket, the amount of bread that he wants to purchase to sell in his shop. When you go to purchase the bread, he will pick it up and put it into a black plastic sack. Now I have been told that it must be a black plastic, so that everyone doesn't know what you are carrying. Anyway, here we are enjoying our lunch. (the picture is a little weird because the camera lens had something on it.) The couple to the left is the Mission President and his wife (President and Sister Squires), then comes Elder Jones, then the couple to the right are the Petersons.
This particular post is becoming quite long so I will close and share more of our wanderings later. Life is good. When God created the earth and all of His creations, He certainly included Sierra Leone as one of His beautiful spots. The people here are as beautiful as its nature. We hope that they have the opportunity to use their skills and talents to help their nation to progress.
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