April 21 An Accumulation of Stuff, Bali Delayed

Tonight I will send a couple of blogs. I have not been able to connect to the internet through the cell service. I am at City Cyber Cafe. A couple youth leaving the church helped me find a cafe. The first one we took a car cab to was closed so we got on motorcycles to this one.

Bali Trip

The Bali trip has been delayed for several reasons. The most important is the death of one of the church leaders. The funeral service will be Thursday and internment on Friday. Our visit would only have been for one day with two days of driving. Also no member of the Bali Committee could go this week. We will wait for Pastor Bunduka to return. Then go in May and include the weekend so the committee members will not lose as much time at work. We determined that it was more important to get members of the committee to Bali for more than one day than for me to go there for only one day. We will try to schedule a trip from Thursday through Sunday later in May. The Bali committee was supposed to be called together for a meeting Monday night April 20th. I will attend if it happens. Pastor Boniface was not sure if all of the phone calls were made to the committee.

For those of you that were on the 2007 trip Dr. Recap Bongi, PHD who was the former State Commissioner of Education and operated the Remi Education Foundation School for Special Needs Children died last week in India. He went there for treatment and they say he had large kidney stones which could only be removed by surgery. I am told they had trouble controlling his bleeding. He was a close friend to Mr. Bulama and an inspiration to many people. I will be attending the funeral with the Medical Board.

Now I will continue working on planning of the borehole rehabilitation and pump repair course and working on organizing the ongoing program. We may be going to Pella Monday or Tuesday to see the progress on the new borehole at that location.
I met Bishop Edward at the English service Sunday morning. He told me that the internet at the Yola Diocese secretariat is not functional. There is an internet café that I can use about a kilometer from here. I will have to use the café until they figure out why the system is not working at the Secretariat.

The Jimeta Cathedral Academy is going to be the first school in Nigeria to participate in the One Computer program. (I think that is the name of the program.) They have developed an inexpensive durable laptop with a screen that can be used in the sunlight. I think the original objective was a $100 laptop with basic educational software. The program is to get one computer per child. The program has failed in a few places when the teachers were not properly prepared or the community was not invested in the program and the laptops disappeared. There has been a team from Denmark (and one engineer from the USA) here this past week training the teachers on how to use this technology. The teaching staff is all new this year. They are starting new jobs, with student they do not know and now a technology that they had never thought they would be a part of. They started the training as a group of individuals and now formed a lot of new friendships as they have been taught to use this new technology. The education system here is old school. The teacher will speak and the students will recite and memorize. The computers are different. The students can explore and learn by doing and practicing using fun games and challenge their minds. The teachers were apprehensive that the students will catch onto the use of the computers sooner than the teachers. The teachers will continue to receive instructions for the next few months before any child gets one. On Tuesday the teachers will give a demonstration of the new skills they are learning for the parents. I missed the demo as I was working on the Gobal Health Ministries proposal.

The children are on term break until May. Football is a morning and evening activity the open area sandy area of the compound. They play a barefoot with a soft soccer ball. Their individual skills are very good but have little teamwork. I will get a picture of two of the goalkeeper who uses his flip-flops as gloves. He always laughs when he is scored on. They play with full size goals (two tree branches in the ground with a rope between them). No referees, no off-sides, a few large trees in the pitch. If the ball hits the wall it is out of bounds. The game stops for cars driving through the compound. If you have been on one of the trips here I am sure you have seen the games. It goes every evening.