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.

Donna had an unusual visitor at the library yesterday.  For some reason the cow came back several times and tried to stick his head in the window but the bars defeated him.



The Ministry of Works decided to do us a favor and send a road grader to smooth out our dirt road - in the middle of the rainy season.  So now all of that loose dirt has become a really slimy mud road.

The key broke off in the lock to our back door while it was still locked.  The only way to get the lock out of the door to replace it was to use a hacksaw blade to cut through the bolt.





We brought a Life Straw with us that came from Bass Pro.  You are supposed to be able to stick one end of it in a mud puddle and suck clean water out the other end.  Jim attached a hose and funnel so we can gravity feed water through the up side down straw to purify it.  We have not gotten sick yet.

Donna saw this person with interesting sandals and he allowed her to take a picture.  Initially she thought he had thorns sticking up through his shoes, but it is just tire rubber that fits between his toes.



We received a large shipment of donated theological books yesterday and Fred started unpacking them today.  It will be a big job to catalog and process them all.



Fred is the librarian and Simon is a student library worker.  Donna was teaching them how to do a reback on damaged books today.

We got a package from our kids which was really exciting!  They mailed it March 24 and it arrived at the Kaimosi post office April 7.  We actually got the package May 4.  It took 2 weeks to go half way around the world, and 4 weeks to go the last 1/2 mile to us.  Go figure.



When we had the last violent storm, a cypress tree blew down on our electric wires.  Several other trees in the area also landed on wires and we were without electricity for about a day and a half.  That makes it impossible for us to do any welding.  It also means everything in our freezer thawed.  So we have been eating lots of meat.  Today was the first day we had electricity again and it did not rain until 6:30 pm so we got in a full day of work.



Not wanting to waste anything, the offending cypress tree became new clothes line poles at the women's dorm.



We put the first truss up using just step ladders.  They are quite heavy, so we built some scaffolding out of blue gum poles we cut in the forest.

We got the beams welded to the top of the posts and got the first truss set before it started raining.  And boy did it rain!



This is the hardest rain we have had yet.  We even had pea sized hail that lasted for about 10 minutes.  There was strong wind which brought down tree branches and even blew over some trees on to power lines.   This has become a normal daily event.  The rain comes and the electricity goes off.

Donna's library work study students are learning new mend/bind skills every day.  There was no electricity today, so it was a good time to teach them how to put Sikishu (rice paper) hinges in books.
Joshua (left) and Simon (right) are both first year students so they have two more years to utilize their skills.



We finished pouring concrete for the last pole today.  It was labor day in Kenya, so only Derick and I worked.  Note the trench from the right hand pole that will take the wires from the panels to the battery house.  Jim only brought two pair of jeans and he was destroying them, so he bought a pair of overalls to work in.



In the afternoon we started digging for the battery house which is just up the hill from the classroom building.  Note the trench coming into the battery house from the panel structure.