This day was a pretty full one considering that we were now staying at the care center. We got up and somehow missed the breakfast but joined in the group devotional talk. It was about the fruit of the Spirit and how we need to pursue them happening in our lives.
Afterwards we got in the van and picked up a SIM card and also made a run by the kids School to figure out when and how I would teach computer skills. Turns out that they wanted us to teach the teachers, not the students! Their computer room was very crude – some of the computers were maybe 8 years old or more. Their monitors were especially struggling. They were all messed up in different ways. Made me thankful for what we have. Anyway, we left, ran more errands I think, and returned to the care center around 1:30. So we inhaled some food and then returned to the school to teach them at 2:00. We had a classroom full of teachers, none of which had ever used a computer. The two computer instructors were also there and they had of course used a computer, but they were not master at anything, especially even typing. So we taught the class what the mouse and keyboard are, how to turn it on, how to hit F1 to continue on the BIOS error messages, how to left/right/double click. We also taught them how to open Word and so on. Finally we got into actually typing. We had to teach them how to use the space bar to make spaces between Words even! We taught them for two hours then we taught the teachers Access for an hour. Afterwards they wanted to talk to me about making a web site for their school. I explained to them that they needed a url and a server to host it. But I went ahead and gave them some tools to make their own web site, and in the process my SD card was infected with viruses.
We returned to the school and Nicole and I gathered all the older kids together and started into the outreach diagram. After dinner I tried to work on the laptops that we set up for them only a few months back. They are such a dysfunctional mess, because someone higher up decided that the kids should be allowed to install what they want - huge mistake. Hung out with the kids.
After a simple morning devotional, David and I washed our clothes (by hand). After an hour of that, we had a prayer and worship time (just us Ayebos) and then talked a little bit about the day. Jenni shared some about her stressing out about all the things that have to be coordinated, we prayed for her.
I was then going to work on construction projects but without a vehicle that proved difficult, so I instead worked on the computers some more. I got one computer I thought in a good working state. Also since NEPA (the Nigerian Electrical Power Association periodic country-wide power grid) was not on, we ran the generator and charged all the laptops, and charged them to take them all to the school for the teachers to use.
At 2 PM we started teaching at the school again. The teachers were so amazed by the orphan's laptops, they had never seen something so nice.We taught more advanced things like cut copy paste, undo and redo, styling fonts, using pictures, and so on. By 4:00 most of the teachers were playing the typing games (which was needed actually) and the computer teachers had found the children’s games that I had loaded on the machines and were just playing those, which frankly kind of frustrated me. I taught Access for another half hour, and said goodbye.
Somewhere in there one of the orphanage administrators asked for help with her home laptop, so Enoch dropped us off there. On the way the NEPA power went out, so we couldn’t do anything about it. But I got to hear her husband’s story about how he used to be the Kogi State speaker of the house on judiciary something, and how the military coup in the late eighties had pushed him out of a good career where he was able to do some good. It was sad to know that now he is kinda an odd job guy. They had a pitiful 30 year old mazda 323 that was sooo worn out - beyond what one would use in the US. He eventually drove me back to the care center. As he drove away I definitely felt a bittersweet thing had happened – I had been reminded about how undeservedly blessed we are – and I had also been reminded about how unfair and difficult some people, even nations of people, have it, partially because of governmental Islam and partially because of individuals greed and lack of opportunity.
Huge beetles with 1cm long mandibles and maybe 5 inches long total have started showing up at night. Crazy.
Many other things happened at the care center, and we spent a week there with the orphans. I'm just going to cut off the journaling here, other than to give you a few thoughts in passing.
If I were to adopt one of the kids, it would be this one! Joshua's got a great heart,
he's a tough one too.
Worshipping with the orphans, the locals, and others. We met at the bush school.
One day we painted the kid's school.
I was the edging guy.
Playing soccer (futball) with them.
At the orphanage, the kids would have to pound the yam.
We started on a chicken coup.
The rest of the crew returned from another bush outreach.
praising the Lord for the events to come and the events so far.
We had nice periods of intense rain.
Some folks loading up for another bush outreach!