Giraffes

While Krista's parents were here, we tried to introduce them to some of the fun and unique sites we have here on the edge of the Sahara. Just a 45 minute drive outside of the city roams the last wild herd of giraffes in West Africa. There are currently a little over 200 giraffes remaining in the area. They are beautiful gentle creatures.


We drove out to the area where they are and picked up a guide. Here's the guide we had this time. He's one of the best. He's been doing it for over 20 years and loves telling people all about the giraffes. He climbs on top of the vehicle and then tells you which direction to drive by holding a stick down over the windshield. If he wants you to go to the right, he motions to the rights, etc...


All in all, we saw about 28 giraffes. Some were in groups of 2-4 and in some places we saw as many as 14 in a more open area. They have very long tongues (18 inches) for reaching out and grabbing those leaves.


You know it's hard bending down to get a drink like that! It can't be comfortable.


Several of the giraffes are pregnant right now like the one in this picture above. The herd has slowly been gaining in numbers in recent years. About 8 years ago, they numbered around 150. Our guide carefully had us walk close to the giraffes. This one walked right up to us, watched us and then moseyed on by.


These giraffes were getting close to the main road that goes east/west across the country. Our guide wanted to head them away from the road, so he put his shirt on a long stick and held it up in the air as he walked toward the group. That got them moving and they even broke into a jog.

Half the fun is just driving through the bush. There are other animals like cows, goats, sheep, donkeys and camels roaming around with shepherds nearby. You also see huge termite mounds like this one above. The kids like to climb on them.

Graduation

It's been a crazy past two months. At the beginning of June, my brother and his family left for vacation. Right at the same time, Krista's parents arrived for a 3 week visit. We also had Joy finishing up her senior year at Sahel. Between keeping up with the flying, maintenance and trying to spend time with family visiting there hasn't been much time for updating the blog. The reinforcements are arriving again, though. One of our pilots arrived two weeks ago and my brother returns soon as well. So, we'll try to bring you up to date on the happenings during the past two months.

Here's our family with Joy at her graduation. We're really proud of her and were sad to see her go. After spending the summer in the States, she'll be going to a one year Bible school in Europe. The kids talk about Joy all the time and still have her seat reserved at our table.

First Flight

Aside from our "normal" flying, we sometimes do some short flights that are a bit different. A while back, we had the chance to do a quick flight near the city for some guys who've done a lot of work for SIM over the years. These four men are all skilled workers (welder, mason, plumber, carpenter, and also a foreman). They've been involved in virtually every building project we've had in the city over the past 10+ years. They've worked on our houses, the office, built new buildings at the school, and done projects at the hangar. One of them has been working for SIM for 20+ years. None of them had ever been flying in a plane before. One of the planes needed to do a quick local flight one day, so we worked it out to take them along.


Ian took them up for the flight. It was quite an adventure for them to fly and see the city and their neighborhood from the air. The perspective is completely different. What fun it was to see the delight on their faces and hear them talk about the experience. "The houses, cars, trees, everything looked like toys."


This was a simple way to show our appreciation for all the work these men have done for SIM over the years.


Here they are in the plane getting ready to head out for the flight.

Yesterday we had another opportunity to give a first flight for some other people. One of our co-workers asked if we could do a quick flight for his son, who's graduating from Sahel next week. He brought along two of his classmates. I decided to take Silas and Elayna along on the flight as well. We recently installed a little child bench seat in the back of the diesel plane. It took us 3 years to find one of these seats (pictured above) for the plane. The diesel plane has four regular seats. This little bench goes in the baggage area and will allow us to fly families, with a few more kids, all together on the same flight. Elayna was the first person to try out the seat. You can see she was quite excited at the beginning of the flight. Unfortunately, she got sick right at the end as we were returning to the airport.


Silas had never gone on a flight with Daddy before. He's been waiting anxiously for his turn for a long time and was delighted for his chance to go.

Life Lesson

The other day, Silas and Elayna were elated when Krista helped them catch a baby gecko in our house. We have them in our house quite often, but it is always a highlight for the kids to catch them and hold them. One after another, Silas and then Elayna came to show me their prized catch.


They then took the gecko outside to play with it. Of course, our two dogs thought they should be in on the action too. Silas and Elayna very carefully took turns protecting the gecko from the dogs while the other one gathered dirt, rocks, and wood to make a nice habitat for their pet gecko... first in the windowsill (which has bars on the outside so the dogs couldn't get to the sill) and then in the sand in the yard. After about 20 minutes, the gecko started to escape and ran part way up the wall around our property. Silas started guarding it on the wall saying, "Mommy Mommy, the gecko's getting up on the wall. Help... help me get it." To which Krista replied, "It's okay. It will be fine. It's a wild animal. Just let it run." The gecko went higher up the wall.
And right then, along came a big lizard. The lizard raced over to the gecko, opened it's mouth, and gobbled up the cute little baby gecko. "Mommy, the lizard just ate the gecko!!!" squealed a very distraught Silas.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, but I think the kids learned that when it comes to geckos... Mom doesn't always know best.

More on Unclean Women

If you'd like to learn more about obstetric fistulas and the plight of the women and girls who suffer from this injury, there is an in depth article in the January 2010 issue of Christianity Today written by Dr. Lewis Wall. The article is titled Jesus and the Unclean Woman. You can read the article by clicking here. Dr. Wall is president of the Worldwide Fistula Fund that is partnering with SIM to build a fistula clinic here in Niger. He's made multiple trips to Niger throughout the process of planning for and now building the clinic here. On each of those trips, we've had the privilege of flying Dr. Wall and the other team members who came with him.

Even though the Fistula clinic is still under construction (they hope to complete the construction within the next 10 months or so... time lines have to be flexible here), two teams of doctors have already come to perform the first surgeries in the existing operating room at the medical center. One team came last December and did 6 surgeries. The second team (with many of the same members) was just here and performed 10 surgeries. The surgeries were all a success. At the party they held for the women before they went home, there was much celebrating and rejoicing. Each woman was dry and received a new dress. They left having been healed physically and having experienced the love of the Great Healer in a very tangible way. The next team hopes to return in August for another round of surgeries.

One of our colleagues wrote an excellent post today about the plight of these unclean women in Niger. You can read the post by clicking here.

Construction Progress for the Fistula Clinic

I just returned from an overnight flight out east. Some of you have heard us talk about the new Fistula clinic that is being built by SIM and the World Wide Fistula Fund. This clinic will help bring physical healing to the growing group of women and girls suffering from chronic incontinence as a result of difficult childbirths. These women are outcasts in society because of this injury. Many are rejected by their husbands and left to rely on handouts from others for even their basic needs. The new Fistula clinic is being built in Danja where SIM has been running a leprosarium for over 50 years. As a result of the physical healing and the loving care of the staff at the clinic, the women will also have the opportunity to have their spiritual needs met.

We've been regularly flying our construction supervisor to Danja to help oversee each new step of the clinic construction. While we're there, we assist him in any way that we can. As you can see from the pictures, it is a very sandy, hot location. In the picture above, you see the driveway that runs down the middle of the property and connects the hospital end to the area where the staff housing is located.

This time, we headed out to the airport at 5:15 am and arrived in Danja mid-morning after a 2 hour 45 minute flight and a half hour drive from the nearest airport where we landed. After a brief visit with the family who hosts us, we headed out to look at the construction site. The clinic will be in a U shape with walk ways between the buildings. In this picture above, you can see the floor of the building that will house the operating room and then a walkway connecting it to the next building which will house a 40+ bed ward. These concrete floors were poured in the last few weeks on previous trips and are now covered with sand that is watered daily to help the concrete cure correctly. It is very difficult to keep the cement wet enough with the hot sun beating down on it each day and temperatures well above 100 deg F.

In this picture, you can see the floor of the ward. At the far end behind the first tree is the other side of the U with the administration building floor. The buildings in the background are part of the existing leprosarium.

Here's Chad (our construction supervisor) getting the work organized with the contractor in charge of the masons.

The task for this trip was to pour the floors for three other smaller building and the connecting walk ways. These buildings will house laundry facilities and bathrooms for the clinic and the staff. In North America, a cement pour of this size would be a pretty simple task with a cement truck and pumps to move the cement around. Here it is a very large undertaking. All the cement is mixed by hand and then moved into the right location by wheelbarrows. It's miserable trying to work as hard as the guys have to work during the day in the scorching sun. As a result, Chad likes to do these cement pours during the night. In the picture above you can see the wood forms and the rebarr metal for the floor. You can also see a few taller wood posts. They place these posts around the construction area and wire up fluorescent lights on the posts for the work that night.

45 men worked from 10 pm until 6 am pouring the floors of the three smaller buildings and the connecting walkways. They had 3 teams of guys mixing cement, about 13 guys hauling the cement in wheelbarrows and a team of masons.

Here are all the wheelbarrows ready for action that night.

Chad's other task that day was to lay out the lines so that the masons could start laying the cement blocks for the outer walls of the operating room building. Here he is making sure we placed the lines square. You can see the piles of cement blocks in this picture. There are 9,000 blocks of cement in those piles that will become the walls of these buildings. Each block was hand made by 2-3 men over the last month. They hand mixed the cement and poured it into one metal form to make a block at a time.

While Chad supervised the work throughout the night, I slept. The next morning we began the trip back with two stops along the way. The first leg was a 45 minute flight to our other hospital in Galmi to pick up two passengers. While we were there, Chad had a meeting to discuss the current construction project taking place there. They set a game plan for the next 6 months of that construction process. We then flew 35 minutes to another town, so that one of the passengers (our regional director for that part of the country) could take care of some business there for two hours. While he went into town, I visited with the traffic controller and airport director. I had a good discussion with the airport director, who we've known for a while now, about spiritual things. He has a lot of questions and is very open to discussing things. Pray that he'll understand the Truth and choose to follow it.

When the passenger returned from town, we took off to return to Niamey. By this time it was late afternoon, so we had to endure the bumps that come with flying in the afternoon during hot season. We climbed to 12,000 feet and were able to get above the worst of the bumps for the 1 hour 40 minute flight. After landing, we refueled the plane for our next flight, stopped by the police at the airport to turn in the form with the details of the flight and passengers, and then drove into the city. I dropped off the passengers at their homes and the guesthouse and arrived back at our house around 6:45 pm.

Water Games

One of the great things about the school where the kids attend is all the extra activities that they provide for the whole community. Seeing as we are now in the middle of hot season, the student council recently held water games for the elementary students after school. They even let Elayna and Silas join in the fun along with the younger siblings of other students. We love the family atmosphere at the school and the way the kids are able to have fun with students of all ages. One of the games was bobbing for frozen tampicos in a bucket of water.


Here's Silas holding his treasured frozen tampico. This particular tampico is like an orange slushy in a bag.


The kids tested their skills at doing the limbo under a stream of water.



One of the favorite games was the slip and slide that they made on the newly planted grass on the playing field.


One of the last games was a relay race. Each team had a shirt that they soaked in a bucket of water. Then they carried the shirt to the other end where they squeezed the water into a can. Whichever team collected the most water won. The older elementary students had to wear the wet shirt as they ran. Here Silas is being helped by one of the high school girls.

We did have one injury during the water games. One of our elementary boys broke his leg in three spots while jumping on the wet grass. The Lord orchestrated everything to provide the medical help he needed. His teacher immediately did a great job of comforting and calming him while the school nurse helped. Krista called his parents to come get him. Another parent (who is a doctor) helped assess his injury. His parents came and loaded him on a board into their station wagon to take him to a local clinic for x-rays. On our way home, we stopped at our mission office and ran into one of our doctors (a Pediatrician) who had just arrived in town from Galmi hospital. We mentioned what had happened and he recommended having another doctor (a surgeon) look at the x-rays. The other doctor had just arrived in Niger from the States an hour before. He was staying at the guesthouse with his wife and a friend who is also a surgeon. I was going to be flying the three of them to Galmi the next morning so I needed to talk with them anyways to make arrangements for our flight.

We headed to the guesthouse to see them. Even though they'd been traveling for more than 24 hours, they were willing to go to the clinic to help. After dropping Krista and the kids off at our house, I drove the two surgeons to the clinic. His parents were quite relieved to see them walk into the clinic. They were supposed to arrive in Niger two weeks earlier, but their trip had to be postponed because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Otherwise they wouldn't have been here in town on that day. The people at the clinic graciously allowed our two surgeons to direct the care. They all agreed that the break was too complicated to treat here and that he needed to be evacuated to England for surgery. They immobilized his leg with plaster from his foot up to his waste. A few days later a medical evacuation plane came and flew him and his dad to England. They'll be in England for at least a month and will have to return to England in 9 months to have the pins removed from his leg. Pray for this family as they are separated for several more weeks. The mom is in the States now for a conference and the other kids are staying with another mission family here.