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Interesting things
Another week over here, we’re getting used to having a few less animals around the compound. The new kitten is very funny, and she can be very loud when she wants to be. If she wants fed, she makes sure that you know it.
The last week has passed by fairly normally, on street ministry last Wednesday; we promised the homeless boys that we see regularly that we would take them to play football on Saturday so I picked them up in the morning and drove them across the city to one of the primary schools. Some of the staff here help out with some further ministries to the kids who go to school there. We arranged an opposing team for our boys from the local primary school kids and they got underway. Our guys won eventually, which helped their enjoyment and they were clearly very appreciative as I drove them back to their part of the city.
Saturday evening Brian and I invited some of the girls round for dessert and movies, so Brian used his groovy ice-cream maker and I made some chocolate sauce which went down well. We watched a comedy called Tommy Boy, which Brian swore by, and it was very funny.
The taxi ride in this morning, the taxi was having a particularly hard time making it up the hill, and barely made it in 1st gear. At the top of the hill, the driver asked us to get out, lifted up the seat and tweaked something in the engine. We started off again with renewed vigour; it is amazing that some of these vehicles stay together let alone drive up the hills here. Most of them are held together with duck tape and rope. It is quite unnerving while sitting in a taxi hurtling down the hill on the way home. I just pray every time that the brakes will get the thing stopped at the bottom. It’s quite humorous to watch the drivers wrestle the things around corners; some of the steering columns are so loose that the driver has to rotate the steering wheel one full rotation before the wheels start to turn. Which doesn’t help when they have to swerve to avoid another local who has chosen to struggle across the ring road with a very heavy sack of grain, directly beneath a footbridge.
Brian and I were buying meat from our local butcher this week, which is basically a small shed, with some hooks on which a cow carcass hangs. You ask for the required amount of meat, and he takes his knife, brushes the mass of flies away from the meat, cuts off a slab of it, cuts it up on the chopping block and sticks it in the grinder. He then proceeds to count your money and change on the same chopping block. As if this wasn’t unnerving enough, the other day, while Brian and I were standing watching him cut up the meat, a large piece fell to the floor (a cement floor that is fairly filthy). He promptly picks it up, puts it back on the counter and continues to cut it up. When Brian explains that he doesn’t particularly want that certain piece of meat, he shrugs, looks at us with a sort of “Fussy Forengi” look and hangs it back up ready for the next customer. It really is quite unbelievable.
Bingham continues the search for broadband internet, but I am doubtful that it will happen in my lifetime, let alone before I leave. The telecoms company here has a monopoly on telecommunications and as a result can charge what they like for their broadband service. They seem to think that it’s better to charge a pointless amount of money (about $5000 American monthly for a 2 Mb line) to a few customers, than charge a reasonable amount to a lot of customers. I can’t help but think that a bit of competition would move the technology of this country along so fast! With no high-speed internet for all but the richest of businesses, no one would want to try and set up an internet company here. However, businesses here work entirely differently from back at home. Their business theory is totally different to ours, I heard of one supermarket that stocked a very popular brand of fizzy drink, so much so that it was always sold out of it. After a while, they stopped selling it entirely and, when asked why, they simply said that it was because it was too much work always having to reorder it.
Street Ministry this week was again enjoyable; it’s so great to see God working in the lives of the kids here. All of the boys that we visit weekly are now attending church weekly; the church has arranged for a van to pick them all up on Sunday morning. They are all so eager to hear what we have to say when we visit them; they almost forget that we are bringing bread to them as well.
Take care,
Niall
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