Monday May 18th Numan

Monday May 18th Numan, Meeting with the Archbishop

Monday morning after breakfast I spent time taking pictures of birds from the back porch of the Numan Guest House while waiting for Yakubu and Adams to drive from Numan. Our plan is to straighten out the water equipment storage area and get the pipes Adams thinks we need to fix the pump at Dashen. The well has been deepened and a new concrete apron placed around the well. They have an old hand pump that was working. We were going save some money and try to repair it rather than getting a new one. I will skip ahead to Tuesday here. We drove to Dashen and found out that the threads on their rods do not match the cylinder or rods we had and so we need to replace everything. Back to Yola to buy the parts and on Wednesday we will go back to Dashen and install the India Mark II pump on the old Unimade base. We only got the pipes we did not straighten the storage room. Back to Monday.

I spent part of the Monday morning trying to get the old desktop computer used by the LCCN office to accept new USB 2 flash drives. (If you ever want to send computers to Nigeria or any other African country. I suggest laptops. They have significant power issues here. Desktop computers need a lot of power.) They had typed a report on a newer laptop but the printer does not have a USB port and the laptop does not have a printer port. So they want to transfer the file to the old computer to print it. I transferred the file to a CD but the CD drive did not read the file. About that time the Archbishop declared that I had to go to have lunch then come back and talk with him. We went to what was said to be the best restaurant in Numan. I ordered the goat with white rice and beans, Yakubu had fried rice with beef and Adams had pumped yams with a sauce. I got a spoon and Yakubu got a fork and Adams had his fingers. We asked for water to wash our hands. The girl rolled her eyes and got a little pitcher. We asked for soap and got nothing. We asked for more cutlery and she said “This is Numan.” Finally, they brought a kitchen knife for the white man.

After the best lunch in Numan, we met with the Archbishop with a draft executive summary of our work so far. He was very pleased and told us to continue, that we are doing the right things and we can share it with the diocese bishops. He will read the summary and study the mission and vision statements before he leaves for Israel on Wednesday. He was very impressed with the organizational charts and said he wanted the Medical Board to have things like this. After working in Dashen and Pella we will get back to filling in the huge holes in the program.

Part of the work we are proposing is to form a Water Program Planning Team. Currently, it is Jay, Adams, and Yakubu (J.A.Y.). The rest of this week will be project work for the three approved water projects. Dashen Bible School well rehabilitation, Pella Bible College bore hole construction and the Billi Clinic borehole activation and distribution system.