This must be the year of the deluge, we have had another storm and from about 6 one evening to 8 or 9 the next morning we received about 16 inches 400mm of rain.  That is minimum, my rain bucket that I am using to measure holds only 4 inches I had to empty it 4 times 2 of those times was when I randomly woke up in the night and it was over flowing so really no telling how much more rain there actually was.  I am glad to report that there were not high winds this time so we are wet but well.  I went on a walk down the road from our house just to see where all this water was going.  The road after about 100 meters from our house was a stream.  I followed it’s path to the flood plain and by the time I got to the plain the river was too deep and furious to walk in and about 20 meters wide.    The flood plain was full of water. All the foot paths are creeks there is no place there wasn’t water.  One man was standing what I thought was outside his house but as I got closer I realized that the water had taken away the side of his house and he was actually inside looking at his non existing wall.  Before, to get to the river you would have to walk 45 mins to an hour.  I arrived in 10 mins. at a wandering pace.  Not because I am fast but because the water is high.  I didn’t go into town and everyone who works with us didn’t show up.  We received phone calls and messages that Beira was flooded again.  Late in the afternoon I rode my bike just down the street from us, Passage de Nievel, towards town just to get out of the house for a while and the whole area was still flooded, houses looked like poor mans castles with their moats.  To get into the neighborhood market I had to ride through nearly knee high water.

         Gango came in the next day as well as the other workers telling stories of houses chickens ducks and goats being swept way by the floods.  The Beira news paper was full of pictures of down town streets with water half way up the cars, people in chest high water and just the tops of houses, pictures of total messes that we were told in the captions were the remains of peoples houses.

         Dave Jo and Grace are on vacation right now in Zimbabwe so they have missed the fun of this week.  The had to go to Zim because the visa restrictions that mandate them to leave the country every 90 days until have their DIRE (residency).  They will be back Sunday none the wiser.

         We have had a deluge of another sort as well.  We have received 3 large donations to help with different parts of the project.  One is to set up a methane pilot project here at Kedesh.  Using cow manure that is placed in tanks we will be harvesting the gas.  So the plans tanks piping and cow poo all are provided.  This is based on existing projects in India. 

         The second gift from Norman and Carol Swanson parents of John Swanson who was with us for several month a couple of years ago, is to fund the construction of a fence to enclose Kedesh.  As you have heard in days past thieving is one of our main problems so having a fence around our place will help in untold ways.  One is we quit have a veggy garden on our project because we ended up not eating nearly half or more that was grown.  It is the same with the fruit trees, with the mangos I don’t worry too much about people taking because there are so many every where.  But Banana Atta Papaya and the like we rarely eat the fruit of our own property.  For instance we have only two Atta trees right now, even though we have had this property for I guess 5 years now I was able to eat my first Atta just this past year. People walking down the street were able to just look in and see what was going on and then come back at a more appropriate time to help themselves.  Also the control of the animals.  We have been keeping goats and chickens for years now and our chickens never got to more then twenty and usually stayed around just a half dozen.  People just felt it was Ok to help themselves to our chickens as they free ranged.  The same has been true with the goats.  We have to have a boy with the goats 100% of the day time people will (and have) help themselves to a goat or two and as well the goats have been known to help themselves to other peoples gardens.  With a fence we will be buying several more goats and get a proper herd going and not have to worry about them as much.

         The third was towards a couple of things, completion of the building that we have over half built.  We also have been considering buying the property that joins ours, so if the owner of that property is willing to sell at a fair price we would be able to purchase it.  The good part is the fencing of that property would only have to be done on one side.  One side has a lake as a natural barrier. A second side already has an existing wall the 3^rd side is joining our property.  So the wall that would have gone between our two properties would just be built on the road side of the new property.  This right now is totally hypothetical since we have not been able to find the owner of this property.  But we have heard that he was interested in selling.  This property would be used as the farm side of things.  We would be planting more fruit trees keeping the animals and garden, with just a simple house for a staff member to live in as ‘guard’.  This would essentially double the size of Kedesh bringing it to 2 hectares or 5 acres.

         We have 7 of the older boys that have gone to a camp called Teen Missions for about a month.  This leaves us with many of the littler guys.  It is a bit easier in one way because there are fewer boys.  It is harder in other ways because it is school holidays and we like to keep the boys occupied and doing things.  We continue doing construction but it has to be on a much smaller level for the little guys.  But to contradict myself yesterday I was having to do a lot of office work and during a break I went out to see what the boys were up to.  I found them building a dip tank by themselves.  I had several days earlier just described this tank that we will use to dip paint, sheets of metal, grates, expanded metal and plywood to the boys and where it was to be built.  The boys ages 8 to 12 built it on their own!!!  I got there just as they were putting the finishing touches.  I gave it an inspection gave them one or two pointers, but was really proud of these little guys just went for it on there own and made their tank all well done!!