A Little Quiter

Monday 2^nd December

After the excitement of Saturday, Sunday was a day for prayer. With a walk of 45 minutes each way to church and a two hour service, the morning was fully occupied. A snatch of lunch and I was off on a 2 ½ Km walk to meet someone at 2.30 pm for the 2 pm 'Section meeting'. At 3 pm I decided to move on – sometimes I bump into someone in the compounds who leads me to the meeting. I was not disappointed and a member of our community lead me to the right place. It took a while to find a bible. I made a phone call to Dilys to find the right reading and we were able to get going at a little before 4 pm!!

On arriving back home just after 17.30 I quickly put on the kettle, peeled some onions and put on some rice. Typically the power stays on until about 18.15. Yesterday it went off before 18 hrs and before I managed to cook anything. I wasn't going to cook at 22 hrs, so it was a bowl of conflakes, a few mangoes and some roasted peanuts for supper!

I later used the electricity at 22 hrs to contact home and catch up with e-mails etc.

One of the effects of the power outages is that I am rarely in bed until well after midnight. Last night it was about 1 am.

Both Diven and Jennipher had insisted that they would see me early this morning (at least by my standards). Diven would be around by 9 hrs and Jennipher by 8 hrs!! I was up in good time!

At about 10.30 Diven arrived!! Jennipher arrived about an hour later!!!

I decided to make a few notes of the outstanding issues I needed to address. I also wanted to check out the laptop because I have had difficulty playing DVDs. Since PIZZ school wants the laptop to project videos for the children – I need something that is operating. It appears that there are two DVDs which don't want to play. The others are OK – suggesting that it is the DVDs rather than laptop. I will investigate a little further.

I am keen to better understand the challenges facing the school and the church during this difficult year.

There have been a couple of attempts to rain today. Eventually there was just enough to wet the surface of the ground. We really need a good downpour to feed the newly planted maize. The prospects for rain later in the week look more promising, I hope it won't be too late.

I was reading a little about the climate change meeting in Spain. The politicians continue to talk, but very little action is happening. Unless something is done now, we are likely to be heading for disaster. I have suggested simple measures in the UK such as at least taking VAT off electric vehicles and making public transport free! If these measures are considered radical then there is no appreciation of the scale of the emergency. Yet the politicians are unwilling to to even go this far! In my view we need to make it easy for people to take the correct action – it needs to pay to be green!!

In Monze the people are feeling the effects of climate change – severe hunger. One lady told me that if we repeat this past year's rainfall pattern, there will be few people for me to visit next year!!

Chris