We took the afternoon off and went to the Rondo Retreat in the heart of the Kakamega Forest.  It is about an hour from Kaimosi.  We had a nice lunch with Kennedy and Dorothy Shiverenje at the retreat and then hiked to the top of this hill in the forest, which you can see behind us.



The forest itself is very dense.  They said they have identified 36 varieties of snakes, 22 of which are poisonous.  Things like cobras, mambas, boom slang, puff adders, horned vipers, pit vipers, etc.  We did not see any snakes on our hike, but we did see lots of butterflies and monkeys.

We are leaving Kaimosi tomorrow morning so this is probably our last blog until we get to Iowa on July 3.

The computer lab is finished now and software has been loaded.  There are 15 computers for student use and 3 for staff.  FTC recently installed a satellite dish for internet, but the wireless in the library has not been installed yet.



We had a local welder make 200 bookends for the library.  We glued inner tube on the bottom and spray painted them.  This picture is only part of them.



The finished battery/inverter house.



A full size finger banana.

       Since we are done with the solar project, there are no new pictures to show, but I wanted to update you on how it is performing.  The grid has been down for a day and a half but we have had constant electricity.  It is wonderful!  Since the school is on break, there are no students and many of the faculty and administration are gone as well.  Our electric load is very low, so our batteries are fully charged before lunch.  So far, the system has worked  very well.



Donna got permission to keep 3 of her best library helpers for 2 weeks after all the other students left.  Donna was able to spend a lot of time teaching them circulation and cataloging computer skills.



Miriam has also been spending a lot of time in the library.  She and Simon put together a display of different book repair processes for the guests that attended our dedication ceremony.

You know it is time to go home when your dish rag looks like this.



We broke the spatula in the guesthouse kitchen so we wanted to replace it.  We were in Kisumu today and were able to buy this one.  It was labeled as a "hamburger shovel".

We have heard rats above our ceiling, and Jim finally decided to try to get rid of them.  This is the first one we have caught.

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Rosina, one of Mom's student workers at the library, has been teaching Miriam how to make beaded bracelets in the evenings.  It uses very small beads and is a lot of fun!  I learned tonight that the Swahili word for beads is "shanga".

Today we were honored to have been invited for lunch at the Kisumu Yacht Club by Mukesh and Neelam Lakhani, the owners of the hardware store we have been using for the solar project.  It is right on the shore of Lake Victoria.



One of their friends (right) joined us.  Mukesh did Karoga for us where they bring a charcoal cooker and you do the cooking yourselves.  It was excellent Indian food.

We don't have any new pictures today, but wanted to update you on where the solar project is at.  The contractor came Tuesday June 1 and installed everything except the one small piece he forgot, so the system did not work.  He came back June 7 with the missing piece but after installing it, the system still did not work.  He continued to troubleshoot the system on June 8 and they think they have found the problem in a faulty circuit board.  They are supposed to come back Monday June 13 with a new circuit board.

Miriam arrived late Sunday night.  At the new Nairobi airport, you are not allowed inside the building when waiting for your passengers to arrive.  We have been looking forward to her joining us for a long time.  She will be here for 4 weeks.



FTC had an appreciation "tea party" for us Tuesday night.  It actually was a meal followed by a meeting followed by tea.  It was very nice of them to do this for us.  They even gave us gifts of a dress for Donna, 2 shirts for Jim, and a necklace for Miriam.



Wednesday was the dedication for the solar project and the changes in the library.  They used the solar panel structure as a shade for the speakers and set up tents for everyone else.



As part of the ceremony they gave us another gift of a very realistic painting of Jim and Donna with the solar structure and battery house in the background.



The final surprise was the unveiling of a plaque that designates the solar structure as the Hoeksema Pavillion.  We were very honored.  Following the service everyone went to the dining hall for a meal of chicken and rice with cabbage and chapatis.

Even though we call it the battery house, it is also where the inverters and other electronics are mounted.  The contractor forgot to bring one small piece of equipment otherwise the system would be functional now.  They will return Monday to finish the job.



Installing the final panel.



The finished panel structure.  We are only a few miles from the equator, so we have panels facing both north and south.

We had electricity all day today so we were able to get 17 panels up.  There are 36 total.  We are leaving a 5 mm space between panels and filling the gap with silicone to make the structure water tight.



The third year diploma students purchased the supplies and made lunch for everyone as a thank you for the school year just ended.  They made chicken stew, rice, green grams, cooked cabbage, chapatis (like tortillas), ugali (thick dry gritty corn stuff like nothing you can imagine), sukuma weki (like spinach) and even bought pop for everyone.

This morning we started installing panels on the structure.  We have to drill holes in the purlins to match the holes on the panels so we can bolt them down.  Unfortunately, after installing the first panel, the electricity went off and we could not drill any more holes.  The power came back on about 2:30 and we eventually got 4 panels up.

The contractor came about 4:30 and got started pulling wires through conduit from the structure to the battery house but got stopped by heavy rain.  They hope to have the system finished and functional by the end of the day Thursday.

Friday we got the outside of the battery house plastered and the metal roofing up.



We also are finished with the structure for the panels.  Monday we will start installing the panels.

Today we only had electricity off and on for about half of the day so we did not get as much done as we hoped.  We did get the purlins up.  The roofing arrived late but we did not have time to put it up.



We also got the inside walls plastered with waterproof plaster.

We have a fairly serious problem in the library with mold coming up through the cracks in the floor.  This is one of several spots on the uphill side of the library.  There was also mold high up on the walls, but that was scrubbed with bleach and is much better now.



All of the buildings at FTC are slab on grade.  Any guesses as to how we might be getting moisture under the library floor?

In anticipation of moving the laptop computers to the new computer lab in the library, Jim started installing the eye blots in the tables for the lock down cables.  Rosina is eager to learn anything she can and wanted to use the drill.  During the campus clean up event last Friday she learned to use a lawnmower.



Today we stripped the form boards off the ring beam and welded the trusses to reinforcing bars that were embedded in the ring beam.



We don't use back hoes or trenchers here.  All of the digging is done by hand with a hoe and shovel.  Manual laborers of this type earn about $3.00 per day.

This is taken in our chapel.  Yesterday nominations were made for leadership positions for the next academic year.  Today the 14 new leaders were named and the transfer of responsibilities were handed over.  Of the 14, I was pleased to see that 2 of our returning library work study students were chosen - Joshua as Vice-Chair of the Student Body and Simon as the Head Student of the Library. Both of these are our newly trained book repair students as well.  

Jim goes in at night and pre-assembles the LED tube lights so Kennedy has something to install the next day.



The archives were transferred from the chapel store room to the library today during an all campus work morning.  These three students are organizing the books to be shelved.



The work morning was intended to be an all campus team event.  There were a few who were too proud to be seen working along side students, but we were very pleased that the principal, academic dean, dean of students and several teachers participated.



Rosina and Mark came to our house today to teach Donna how to make mandazis.  It is a deep fat fried bread thing sort of like a rectangular donut without a hole.  They are really good for dunking in chai.

We poured the ring beam on the battery house yesterday.  Cement is mixed by hand in a mortar boat and carried in a karaia, the thing that looks like a wok.



Kennedy Shiverenje has been replacing our fluorescent lights with LEDs.  Kennedy is our maintenance man, teacher, dining hall supervisor.  The ceiling in the library has been falling down so we replaced 4 panels and then added batten strips to all of the joints so the remaining panels won't fall down.



Today we installed the door and grills in the computer lab wall in the library.  The man on the right is William Jumba who built the wooden parts of the wall.

Adjacent to the FTC campus is a dense virgin forest.  For a couple days we have been hearing a chain saw so Jim went down Saturday to see what was going on.  They have cut down a huge tree, about 5 feet in diameter at the base.  It was so tall the chief of police was afraid it would fall on her house.  She is living in the house my family first lived in for a short time in 1968.



The man in charge of the work is blind - orange shirt and cane.  He has hired people to cut the tree down and then saw it into one inch lumber with a chain saw.  One third of the tree will be left behind as saw dust.

It has been over two weeks since we got any water from the water department and our tower tank was empty.  Fortunately, we have water overflowing from our rain tank.  So Jim bought a small submersible pump and filled our tower tank from our rain tank.

We have been going down the last few days with foundation and floor work.  Today we started going up with the walls and it looks like we are making great progress.  The far walls are as high as they will go with the steel reinforced ring beam on top of that.  We would have finished today had it not rained - again.



Rosina is the first student to be allowed to do any work on the library computer.  She is preparing end cap guides for the stacks.  Donna has several talented and highly motivated library student workers this term.  She is trying to get them trained to the point where they can carry on some of the work she has been doing these past few months.

Work on the battery house is moving forward.  Yesterday we set the steel and poured the foundation for the house.



Today the welders put up the Z-purlins for the panel structure.



The welders have finished the door and divider panels for the library computer lab.  We are now painting them before installing them in the wall.



We went to Kisumu this afternoon to buy supplies and we stopped at a grocery store on our way home.  We saw this canned meat, and we are not exactly sure what it is, but we are hoping it is Spam.