Wednesday

    Its Wednesday evening here in Sudan, there are thick grey clouds covering the sky, bringing relief from the higher temperatures.Yesterday it rained for half an hour, adding water to the gigantic holes in the dirt roads. I watched an old 6 wheel drive Mercedes truck crawling through and around the holes, snaking this way and that as the driver tries to keep most of his wheels contacting the ground. By the looks of his tyres, he was way overload... maybe that assists the traction? A little further on we passed a Toyota Troup Wagon stuck in the very middle, deepest part of the road... he had lost his whole Right hand front wheel assembly.. Just the big ball on the end of the front diff was left!
     The office equipment suffers similarly... we are now up to 5 machines with rat eaten internal wiring. Unfortunately for the owner of 2 of these machines, of the dozen or more cut wires.. they are all the same colour... Black!... I have no workshop manuals either, so they will need to send these machines all the way to Kampala, and hope they are able to get the wiring replaced.
     Internet is bad today... Satelite services don't work well with heavy cloud, plus we only have one point for everybody to share, and it is borrowed from "Samaritans Purse", the NGO next door who naturally has first dibs on it!... I've been at the Danish Refugee Council today, and their satelite is completely down today, along with their older Canon copier... too bad I didn't bring all the manuals with me!
    We have been enjoying our time with the people here at ACROSS, Africans from Sudan, Uganda and Kenya mainly, they are all very friendly, and excuse us readily for our non African ways.
Every morning we meet under one of the huge mangoe trees (nearly ripe!)  to sing, read the scriptures and pray together. English is the common denominator language, most people even in the town, have some understanding of it, but for the sake of better comprehension, an interpreter helps out. Some of the songs are in English and some in simple Arabic. Thankfully, their is only one sound for each vowel, so pronouncing the words is not too bad.
    English is a common language, but the real commonality of the folk here is their love for the Lord, and for the people of the area. They work hard to bring help and hope over the radio, in the classroom, in health clinics and anyhere else they can. A number of the staff have families further South, and stay here in Yei, to be part of this ministry, only returning home on  odd ocassions.
Nat, in addition to typing out Discipleship training booklets in a language called Nuer, has been making a new accurate CAD map of the compound, to locate all the underground wiring, to assist with future building works.
    This morning Rhondda and I walked the 2 km into the centre of Yei, to purchase a few things. Rhondda was after more fruit and I was in need of double sided tape (I had left my roll home due to being overload with machine parts). The fruit was easy, there is an abundance of local food... but of 3 stationary shops, no one had even heard of sellotape with sticky on both sides!... I settled on a second hand pair of long trousers (I had only brought 1 pair and Africans don't like to be seen wearing shorts), and a small can of grey paint, which I hope will hide the rat damage in the second Riso printer.
    There seems to be lizards everywhere, inside and out, so Nat has taken lots of photos. The one pictured is about 300mm long. It comes out onto the warm walls in the evenings.... Sorry we dont have many photos of people... they don't like being photographed !