As you can tell by the sporadic nature of my posts here, I still have gotten into a good rhythm for posting at this site. Sorry about that. I know many of you pray for Tumaini and I'd like to keep you up-to-date if I can. Here are a few recent developments for you.
Richard Kusweka's relatives came to take Richard home a couple weeks back. Always bitter-sweet when this happens. Richard was a good boy who never gave us any problems. He was quiet, but very attentive to everything that went on around him. We're glad he's with family now.
Our city water supply has been out for three weeks now. This is not good. Ferdinand has worked hard to track down the problem with the water department. They found some leaks somewhere along the line, but the repairs didn't work. Now they say the St. Augustine dormitory expansions six kilometers away drains the water supply before any gets to us. This is really not good. Unless we continue to follow this up, don't count on the problem being solved. In the meantime we have been relying on ladies in the village carrying buckets of water on their heads from the lake. That gets expensive for the volume of water we need. Thankfully, Dyna came back from the shop today and we'll be able to use it to haul a 1,000 litre tank down to the lake. We have a pump that can fill the tank up in no time. This will ease the burden considerably, but still be a hassle until city water comes back.
Speaking of Ferdinand, he and Paulo are in Dar es Salaam at a training seminar for constructing a simple and cheap water filtration device. SON International is doing the seminar. You can read about the bio-sand filter there. I like that the filter has been used successfully in TZ. You can find lots of products that make big claims, but getting them to work in Africa is another story. SON International is doing the week-long seminar at no cost to us! That's a blessing. What's really amazing is that I have been looking at these very filters for a long time then one day, out of the blue, I received an email letting me know about the seminar. This will save Tumaini a LOT of money on safe drinking water and, potentially give others connected with our churches the same benefit. It's hard to live a productive life when you're sick all the time because of unsafe drinking water.
Finally, on the plane back to the US a few weeks back, God providentially seated me next to a lady who was in Kenya consulting the Heifer Project. I've known about this organization in TZ for some time, but never have been able to contact them. Amanda graciously gave me the contacts I needed and told me how they may be able to help Tumaini establish their farming project. We'll see what happens.
So the children are all healthy and enjoying school. Ferdinand and Happyness (his wife) are really doing a good job overseeing the day-to-day operations. We still have some growing to do with the staff, but we're making progress, and progress is good.
