100th Post

Here's a month or two worth of updates...oh, and it's our hundredth blog, yeah for us.

We had to make some renovations to the house that we moved into.  The kitchen had rotten wood cabinets with a few residents.  We didn't get a picture with the wood cabinets, but here are a couple pictures after the cabinets were torn out (which included some comical kicking and screaming by our Liberian friend when he came across the rats).

 We decided to just put in concrete counters and shelves.  Less places for rodents and roaches to hide.  We moved our kitchen down to the laundry room for a couple weeks while the work was being done.  Here are a couple pictures post renovations.

The outside needed a little work too.  We had to replace the metal "rogue" bars that protect the windows.  After that was done we repainted...

I am sorry to all of my UW friends.  I didn't realize we were painting it Wazzu colors until we were done.  I am so...ashamed.

 One of the other projects that is going on is the completion of an orphanage.  Samaritan's Purse was asked to complete an orphanage that was started a couple years ago but has been sitting due to the owner's lack of funds.  I've gone out a couple times to take pictures of the project for the donor.

Here are a couple neighbor kids checking out the progress.  The older girl has a jug of palm oil.  A very commonly used oil in Liberia from palm nuts.  Just about the worst oil there is when it comes to artery clogging.

The walls were done when we started but the building wasn't back-filled.  The last couple days we have been back-filling using wheel-barrels and "head pans", metal pans that are used to transport concrete for block and plaster work usually.

Last week I was able to get some old pictures of the ELWA hospital from former missionaries and MK's.  It has been fun going through these old pictures.  Although, sometimes I think things haven't changed much in Liberia.

And finally, this week we posted a signboard on the new hospital site showing the proposed layout.  Here I am explaining things to John Vokpo and Samuel Minikollie, two of ELWA's security supervisors.

6 Weeks?

Hard to believe 6 weeks have already gone by. We're all starting to get into the swing of things here. The boys have started home schooling, Jamie is supervising house renovations and Rusty is working on the preliminary steps for the hospital construction process.

The seeds for the project really started about a year ago. Franklin Graham was in Liberia for the festival put on by the Bill Graham Evangelistic Association. He took a tour of the ELWA hospital and saw the poor shape it was in and need for drastic improvements to the facility. In October of 2011 Samaritan's Purse committed to constructing a new hospital for ELWA. The advertisement went out for a Construction Manager to oversee the construction and Rusty applied...and here we are. That's the CliffsNotes version at least.

Rusty has been visiting with Liberian contractors who have submitted to be pre-qualified to bid on the project. Almost 50 contractors submitted their portfolios for consideration. That list has been whittled down to about 10 contractors that have constructed large enough projects to earn a site visit.

The contractor below is building a gymnasium at a local Catholic trade school. The next two pictures demonstrate just how much effort has to be put into construction here. They are mixing the concrete on the ground in a gas driven concrete mixer, hoisting it up about 3 stories, dumping it into a large cart, pushing it across the wooden bridge they've built, and finally dumping it onto the zinc roofing to slide down to the location of the pour for that day. In the US you'd just call the concrete pumping company and...well that would be it.





The first floor of the gym will be for classrooms and admin, but now it's home for a couple saints...

Blessing last week wanted to get out some lip gloss her aunt Jeanna sent with her. Next thing I knew she had covered her eyes in it. Pretty.

Last week a group came out from Auburn University. Here are the players and coach with some of the SP kids. Lots of fun.

The team from EMI came for two weeks to start the hospital design process. They've been gone for a couple weeks now but they left behind a bag full of toys that they didn't get a chance to take to any local kids. We went and visited one of our favorite orphanages last week and delivered the toys. The glasses were a big hit...

Although Blessing had a hard time understanding why she didn't get any toys :(
That's all for now

Back in Liberia

We have arrived safely back in Liberia. This time to work with Samaritan's Purse for 3 years as Construction Manager on the new ELWA Hospital. We'll post more soon about the past couple months and how all of this came about once we get internet to our house, but for now, a couple quick pictures.

The boys have quickly crafted homemade ocean hunting spears and caught an octopus. They cooked part of it and gave some to our guard to carry home.

The Ministry of Public Works has already been out to perform soils testing.

A team from EMI will be out for the next two weeks to start the hospital design. We have a rough schematic from a previous group that was out a few months ago. They left us with a floor plan and this birdseye view...

More in the weeks to come

The forgotten blog

We've been back a little over two months now and I've sat down to post an update many times... Life is just a little more...boring here. No line of people needing money for school fees, no cockroaches and ants everywhere, not quite as many crazy drivers.

To finish the story from my last post, it was a crazy last week in Liberia. We were scrambling to get all the paperwork finished for Blessing before we left. The week was filled with trips to the embassy, doctors office, and various other government offices. Everything came together and we were able to get the last two signatures we needed on Tuesday, the day before our flight left. Our flight left Wednesday evening so we were planning on spending Wednesday finishing giving away some of our last things and saying goodbye to friends. We ran into town around noon to drop our luggage off at the SN Brussels office. That's when everything fell apart.

The SN Brussels luggage checker told us she could check all of our luggage...but Blessing couldn't fly with us. After all the meetings and signatures and waiting and appointments, now a airline employee was telling us they couldn't let Blessing go. The problem was she was traveling on a Liberian passport and she couldn't leave the international wing of the Brussels airport and go to the EU wing. After numerous phone calls and even a quick visit to the Spanish Consular to see what he could do, we changed Jamie and Blessing's ticket to fly directly from Brussels to Chicago. It was an expensive last minute change, but fortunately there was ONE seat left on that plane. So the boys and I said goodbye to Jamie and Blessing in the Brussels airport and they beat us back home flying straight to Chicago and onto Seattle.

First, a couple pictures from just before we left.

Jamie having her hair platted. She managed to avoid this until the end. It was an unplanned event that she just couldn't say no to. The whole process took about 4 hrs. for them to do all Jamie's hair in tiny little braids!

Some of the precious kids we had the pleasure of knowing and helping while we were there.
Kobe and Christopher doing some last minute shopping in Red Light while Jamie had her hair done.

Now a few pictures from our first 2 months back. Here are Jamie and Blessing working on hair. Not Blessing's favorite thing, but her hair is starting to get long enough to create more options.

(Jamie's hair post tiny braids.)

Here she is with more of an American look (or maybe Canadian?)

Blessing playing with her brother and cousins and Gma and Gpa's house
Christopher with 4 of the Perry cousins....Now
And the same five 15 years earlier.

All three of the boys are playing football. Here's Kobe yesterday against Blaine.
Colton a couple weeks ago.
And Christopher against Friday Harbor.
Blessing and Gma and Gpa cheering on the football game. (with a little more current view of Blessing's hairstyle)

Back Home

A quick post to let everyone know we made it home safely. It was a crazy last two weeks in Liberia. Amazingly we were able to get Blessing's Liberian and US paperwork finished a whole day early...just to find out on the day we were leaving that our return trip was a route that Blessing couldn't fly due to her Liberian passport. We were able to change Jamie and Blessing's tickets 30 minutes before leaving for the airport and they came back a different route.

We'll try to post a little more and some pictures from the last week later this week.

Rusty

Birthday, painting and football

So we have lots of activity as we are less than 3 weeks from leaving Liberia. We are in the process of completing Blessing's paperwork and, Lord willing, will all be departing August 11th. Everyday is a new adventure when you are trying to comply with Liberian and American bureaucracy, but it looks like we at least have a good chance of making it by the 11th. To just give a brief update, today we are sending someone to Nimba County (a long drive on not so good roads) to have a judge sign a document because he is the only one who can sign the document and is in Nimba for 3 weeks for a conference...

This month Blessing celebrated her 1st birthday. We celebrated it on the 14th, although we found out today that may or may not be her actual birthday. The whole idea of birthdays and ages don't have a great deal of importance to many people in Liberia. It seems odd to us, but it's just another cultural difference. I was in the hospital this evening to visit a friend who had a baby via c-section on Wednesday and asked her the typical American question of "what did your baby weigh?". She responded that she didn't really know, but she'd check with the doctor tomorrow.

Back to Blessing's birthday. Jamie made a cake for her on the 14th and she was a little unsure.

Kobe decided he better step in and help her eat it...

More pictures of Blessing from the last couple weeks, most taken by Christopher.

Fatu's house continues to progress. I took the day off and the family went to help paint today. We were joined by the Nolta family who are visiting for a couple weeks. Here Christopher and Prince are painting Fatu's room. Lots of bright colors...
One of the neighbor ladies has been cooking lunch for our contractor so we had her cook a little extra rice for our group. Here we are eating the rice and Tobogee Liberian style, with a big bowl and a bunch of spoons.

After painting we went to watch a soccer game at SKD Stadium. Jeff Nolta called earlier in the day to say he was in town and could pick up tickets for us if we wanted to go with his family. They are having a small tournament with Liberia, Guinea and Ghana. We arrived around 5:00 for a game that was rumored to start at 4:00. We were told the game hadn't started yet, but should start soon. There was a large crowd waiting outside the stadium behind a rope monitored by police and stadium staff. Liberia, like many other countries has a history of trouble at soccer events. We waited for about an hour, crowd watching and eating questionable street fare. Finally I told Christopher to cross the road and ask a police officer when the game would start. The officer told us to go ahead and go through to the gate. We thought it was preferential treatment...until we got into the stadium and found out the game was already in the 2nd half. Apparently all the people waiting outside where those without tickets who were hoping to get in somehow. I think a lot of the confusion came from the fact you couldn't buy tickets at the game, you had to buy them from one bank that was selling them in Monrovia.

So our 30+/- minutes of the game were pretty uneventful. Liberia was up 1-0 when we arrived in the stadium and that was the final outcome. The crowd was very small compared to what we thought we'd see.

I didn't want to risk bringing my camera to the game so the pictures are with my phone. One of the more interesting scenes came after the game, when 4 police in riot gear had to escort the referee out of the stadium. Some of the Guinean players were trying to discuss some of his calls when he was whisked away.
That's all for today. A happy 26th to all our Liberian friends.

Progress

Time to update the blog on the events of June...

The adoption committee has approved Blessing's adoption to move forward as a special needs case. That means the case can continue onto the courts so a decree can be issued...but we've run into a bit of a bump. While the Liberian side is ready to proceed, they are waiting on the American Embassy to give them the go-ahead. The Embassy is waiting on updated fingerprints that we gave in February to be processed. We went ahead and re-fingerprinted ourselves two weeks ago to try to speed things up. The new fingerprints are supposed to be expedited...we'll see.

Fatu's house has been moving along, despite the rain. The roof is on now and we expect to finish the house before the end of July. We again want to thank everyone who has donated for this project. We are absolutely amazed at the outpouring of support for Fatu and generous gifts. Here are a few pictures from the last month.

Nailing a board in place to prepare to cast a lintel.

One of the masons standing on the wall...I don't think his footwear would be OSHA approved.
After all the lintels were cast.

A few extra people came by to check on the progress.

Roof framing finished, starting to install the "zinc" on the roof.

The roof, almost finished. Fatu is in the foreground in pink. She's there just about everyday to see how things are going. Her and her son have also been planting some fruit trees on the property.

After the roof was finished they started filling in the gable end with block.
They also finished installing the "rogue" bars in the windows. Since it is the 4th of July, we'll finish with this picture of one of the workers saluting everyone with his American flag shirt.

Underway

We've been busy the last couple weeks getting started on Fatu's house. Here in Liberia the rainy season is also underway and will continue for the next 4 months. We don't have a lot of choice but to build in between the downpours (up to 200 inches between now and October).

We met on the site two weeks ago and helped to layout where the foundation will go. The ground is a fine white sand that is common around Monrovia. During the dry season it is difficult to drive on because it's like driving in quicksand. Rainy season helps to pack it down though so getting to the lot isn't too bad, other than driving through a couple muddy areas on the way.

Here's a picture of the foundation after they had finished digging, and after the rain had knocked a bunch of the sand back into the trenches.

I think I've mentioned before that most rock in Liberia is crushed by hand. There are a couple patches of rock within about a mile of the site where the property owners and energetic children spend the day breaking rock into piles of different sizes. A small pickup truck load of rock costs about $50 with the expense to load it. This is two small truckloads.

Some of the workers hiding from the rain last week in a house that Fatu's neighbor is building.

Alice, Mercy and Rachel have been asking for a couple months to come "spend time" with Aunt Jamie and Uncle Rusty. Jamie picked them up last Friday and they came over to spend the night. Saturday we went out to lunch with them and into town to buy a few things. We were a little surprised when we drove into Monrovia and the girls told us they'd never been to town before (they only live about 10 miles away). It was a weekend of many firsts for them.

Here are a few more pictures of some light urban flooding while we were in town. The Chinese company CICO is repairing the city streets and improving drainage this year. Many have already been repaved (which makes for traffic nightmares while streets are shut down). They haven't fixed UN Drive yet and even after it is repaired I doubt the drainage will handle the deluges they get in the rainy season. Below is one common site though, a child taking advantage of the rainstorm to take a bath. Unfortunately, I believe most of the system is a combined storm water and sanitary sewer system so backup aren't just storm water.

The girls getting ready for bed Friday night.

This picture is from today. The foundation is complete and they are up to window height with the block walls.

The blocks are available to buy about every 100 yards along the side of the road by more enterprising young men. They buy cement and sand and spend the day making blocks with steel forms that can be purchased from the small welding shops that are about as prolific as the "block factories". A typical factory has 3 or 4 guys that can put out somewhere around 300 blocks a day. For their effort they will probably take home around $4 or $5 a day, assuming they can sell their blocks. The 6" blocks sell for between $0.32 and $0.50 each depending on the location and quality.

Last but not least. A huge thank you to all who have donated so far. We are amazed by the outpouring of support for Fatu and her family. So far my parents have received contributions totaling $7,790!! That leaves only approximately $1,200 to finish the house! If we receive over $9,000 we would like to add some basic electrical wiring to the house so she would be able to hook a small generator up to the house for lights at night. We'd also like to be able to get a few basic furnishings like beds and a few chairs. Thank you to all who have donated so far!