Saturday 29 May 2010

HA Building Project

The team started work today on the new residential building at Hosetta Abdulai Special Needs School. The picture on the left below was taken last week and the one on the right was taken as the start of the work this morning. Although most of the team had travelled all the way from Texas and arrived just last night they all got stuck into the work this morning. It will be good to see how much they can achieve in the week that they are here.

Friday 28 May 2010

Airport Again

Today we have a team of 11 arriving from Texas and 1 Brit, I'm at the airport now with Brian (the Mission Direct construction manager) and Ted and Tom - two team members from Texas who came with the Canadian team and will leave when this next team leave, they have been working with Brian to get the project ready for the team to start work tomorrow. The team will be working on a new residential building at the Hosetta Abdulai Special Needs School.

The team will be here for just a week so we have a packed schedule, starting tomorrow with a morning working at Hosetta Abdulai followed by the afternoon at Hastings for the opening ceremony for the new accommodation building at Hastings, then after dinner we'll be back to the Hotel 5/10 to sort out the aid the team have bought with them.


The Canadian team who left last Friday got a lot of work done at the City of Rest site in Grafton. Here's a photo of how the work was progressing while they were here.

When the Canadian team (plus the 3 Texans!) came their flight was 7 hours late arriving - we were expecting some moans and groans, but they were great right from the moment they arrived.

Saturday 22 May 2010

Baby Mariama

This is Mariama - her Dad bought her to see me last Monday. She was 3 months and two weeks old and her mother had died 5 days before. She was in a bad way so I arranged for her to go to hospital. She was very undernourished and the hospital advised on how best to feed her, but they wouldn't admit her until she was 5 months old (I still don't know the reasons for that).

Later the same day her Dad bought her back to see me and the change in her was amazing - she was much more alert and looked so much better that I was hopeful she'd make a full recovery.

Sadly on Wednesday Mariama died, her Dad had fed her then put her down for a sleep and when she was checked on later she'd died.

I feel so sorry for Mohamed (the Dad). In just one week he's lost his wife and his only child. He came to see me on Friday and is obviously devastated - what could I say to someone who has lost so much?

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Airport Duty

Brian and I will spend most of tomorrow at the airport waiting for our new team of volunteers to arrive. We have a team of 11 coming.....8 from Canada (1 who was here 2 years ago) and 3 from the US (2 who have been twice before and will be staying on with us for the next team too).

Tomorrow night we will stay with the team at a hotel near the airport then bring them across to Kissy on the first ferry on Wednesday morning. It's much nicer to arrive on the ferry during the day, and I should think that after travelling all the way from Canada and the US the team will be ready for bed by the time we meet them at the airport.

We have a full schedule planned for them and we're looking forward to having a team with us again - it's been a month since our last team left!