Home Stretch

On the project front we installed 3 filters in homesteads this week and showed the women how to use them again. They were so thankful and happy when they received these filters. They are so happy that they can have clean water now instead of the bacteria ridden river water. Lets hope the filters can last for years to come. We will do 1 more next week for a total of 4 filters built and installed. This is a far cry from the 5-10 that I wanted to build but a lot of the money was used getting a working mold. On top of that my project partner was sent out of the country for reasons, not his fault in any way, but in any case private. This made all the work with the filters take much longer since it was just me (caleb) at that point.

The hostel activity center grant was approved as we said before but the project start date has been pushed back to Dec 1st by the Embassy for budgetary reasons. This means we won't actually get to do much with this project, but will pass it off to volunteer Lindsey to finish up next year. Here's hoping things turn out well!

With the garden project we met with the women and figured out the problem they were having with the keys. Many of the plots in the garden are being cultivated now and women are beginning to even sell their goods since some things like cabbage and tomatoes are ripening. Its so exciting to see things growing and people getting hope where there wasn't any before. Praise the Lord for this!

And lastly some more exciting news regarding grants came through recently. Through former PCV Amanda Rose we heard about PetroFund and their grants to schools for science equipment and such. Both Rachel and I helped our schools apply and after some time we learned that our applications had been accepted!!! That means Rachel's school will receive a grant of $24500 NAD and mine will receive $69000 NAD. Isn't that awesome? They will be able to get so many things for the physical science and chemistry labs.

In other news we have been having serious electricity problems at our house of late. By serious I mean no electricity from 7pm to 6pm the next day in one instance. We can handle a few minutes or hours at a time but when you get into 10+ hour stretches of no power things start to go bad in the refrigerator and the lifesaving fan is rendered useless when you try to sleep at night. In the words of Namibians, "We are suffering." Yesterday I think the maintanence people at the mission finally fixed one of the problems and allowed us to get power for the last few days. Hopefully this continues:)

See you in America,
Caleb and Rachel