Travel Diary - Day Twenty One

Day Twenty One – Food Parcels
Saturday 19 Sep 09
I’m slowly getting to grips with the problem of water. The thing is you think you have wrapped your head around a problem, only to find there are lots of layers that you haven’t even considered yet. An example: One of the requests of the community in Sophia is that the church considers providing a medical centre. Now obviously a medical centre needs a supply of clean water to operate. That’s fine, I understand the problem. But let’s go a little further. The centre also needs a good quality toilet – and that needs water too. But to get the water you need a water tank and to collect the water you need guttering for the church. And that all makes sense. But that’s not the only reasoning. The toilet is needed if people are going to stay at the church for much more than an hour. Now we look at each other and say, ‘Well, what’s the problem, you don’t need much more than an hour!’ But we don’t have services that last for 3 or more hours either. And that’s all fine too. But that’s not the only reasoning. One of the dreams of the church is to set up a bakery – both to train people and to provide people with a source of income. I found a very simple and effective design for an oven that would not cost very much to build or run and could provide for several people having small businesses of various kinds. BUT, you need clean water to make bread… And that is just a few of the issues.

Clean water is EVERYTHING when you have nothing! I was looking at some estimates that Keith showed me the other day – a twin tank setup with tank stand, guttering and associated plumbing would cost around $NZ1200. Chicken feed when compared with the value of getting a struggling community a little further down the road to self-sufficiency!!

Anyway…we had two things on today. I spoke at a youth leader’s training that was set up at Sophia when they discovered that was something I did – it was really a follow-on from Wednesday. This time I interspersed a variety of games and activities with different qualities of a leader. We looked at Joseph and talked about patience and forgiveness, Joshua and spending time alone with God, and Esther and being obedient. I’m not sure about what I talked about, but I know they enjoyed the games!!

Just before we left for the training a delivery of flour, rice and peas arrived. Once a month a church in the US provides $US200 to purchase and distribute food to the church community. That allows 45 packages of approximately 2kg flour, 4kg rice, and 1kg peas to be handed out. The day before the distribution large 40kg sacks of the constituents are delivered and the job of the evening is to put together the small packages. When we got back from the training I was all fired up to get on with the job and it was then that I really noticed something that had been on the edge of my awareness for a while but I hadn’t really connected with. Keith had been putting me off getting on with the job – fair enough since Aunt Patsy and Felissa are in charge of the process. Eventually I went into my room and read and listened to some music. After a while I realised that the ladies had begun the work and so I went out to help. They indicated surprise at me helping so it was nice to be able to pitch and get on with it.

Well I didn’t let that little highlight stop me and I sat down with the ladies and set to measuring flour and rice and peas into black supermarket bags for handing out tomorrow. I actually found it quite fun, doing the work and talking with the ladies about different things as we went. By the time we were finished it was 11pm and most definitely time for bed. It was also most definitely time for a shower – which was actually a bucket bath because the water pressure is turned off about 10pm – something about saving power.