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Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you’re up to on Facebook.
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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We had major riots just down the street yesterday. Literally
thousands of people. There was a man not even a year ago that got caught with
something to the effect of 20 children bodies in his freezer. It is
said he was selling body parts to the witchdoctors. Anyway he got out
of jail (bribery?) and was back in business and there has been a series
of child snatching just recently. Yesterday they caught him and his
team trying to snatch kids at the school just down the street from us.
It turned into riots and mob justice really quick. One guy was burned
alive, one guy fled in his car and the police got there in time to save
the others. But when the police started protecting them from the
public mob, it got really wild. The people started attacking the
police. It was like a war zone here, just 200 meters down the street,
guns were being fired constantly for about a half hour then
intermittently for the rest of the day. They called the riot police,
the military, tear gas was all over every where and the rioting went
most of the day. One building where they put the guys to save them
from the crowd was torn up metal bar door bent, ripped off the hinges, brick
walls smashed and wood parts set on fire. I gather a few people were
shot. People were throwing logs and burning tires in the street
effectively shut down the road. A public transport bus got stoned.
When the people attacked the police they took the weapons from them
(AK-47's) and smashed them on the ground. The police then took the
guys down to the jail near the rail road tracks (about a mile away) and the rioting
continued all the way the entire area had tear gas. Myself, Heather
and a few of the kids eyes were bothering us. The people then started
attacking firing the police station and the riot police then came and
had like a hundred guys defending the station.
The guy that got away in the car came down our dirt road and a mob
followed the tracks. I was up on our fence watching the commotion that
I could see trying to see what this mob was up to. One guy yelled out
'the white is hiding him' they then all turned and were charging to
Kedesh. I jumped off the wall running yelled out to the boys to shut
the gate. We got there and shut the gate before the mob did. I then
invited the instigator to come in and look for this car we were
supposedly hiding. I asked him to point out the car tracks to me (we had a heavy rain yesterday so everything was still soft.) He just
pouted and ran off the other direction took the crowd with him. The
boys then told me that there was a crowd at our other gate. So when I
went over there the crowd saw me coming panicked and ran off. It was
pretty funny there was no gate there just the gateway and there was
nothing stopping them from coming in, and the panic when they saw me.
I know I'm a pretty crazy looking guy but not known for instilling
panic in people. I couldn't help but think of the verse 'how could one
set a thousand to flight unless the lord was with him' there wasn't a
thousand but maybe a hundred. But it was still pretty funny. The
rioting continued most of the day and we have heard that the public has
gone to this guys house and destroyed it.
Now a day later there is calm, but still a unit of police guarding the jail house where the guys are being held.
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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Care for life gave us all new felt blankets that are now worn regularly to breakfast and video nights Thank you Care for Life!
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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Schooling here is still in what one would call the 'old school' method, books are shared, much is done simply by repetition. I battle to try and get the boys to think outside of the box, improvise, think ahead, plan. Culturally it is not done a lot, the demand for it is not here, this is Africa after all. The pace is slower. Which is nice a lot of the time.
Then there are other times.
I see a kid standing next to a large pot eyes glazed over and I walk over to him and ask him 'what are you doing?' After the moment it takes to re boot from the dormant state I get a blink or two and 'Cooking lunch'. My response will be 'no you are not cooking lunch, you are staring out into space, what are you doing?' He gets a little nervous, smiles and shuffles his feet. 'I'm cooking rice' I lift up the lid on the pot and it is just water. 'No you're not, that is just water.' Shuffle, smirk, 'I waiting for the water to boil'. (Now we are getting warmer... so to speak). I ask him 'have you washed the rice yet?' (I think I just heard a penny drop) 'aaaah no', 'have you measured out the rice yet?' The feet head for the kitchen in short hurried steps. I walk off mumbling.
I refer to this as ABC thinking if you take out or change B nobody knows how to get to C. You definitely can not prepare C if B is not done.
As any parent knows keeping knives forks and spoons in the kitchen is a mission. You'll find them in the sand box, the kids room, the garage... When your property is 10 acres and you have 35 boys the mission is to even find them. I usually stumble over them rusted or when the rains quit and grass starts to die a little shine out of the dead grass catches my eye, once in the goat pen- I'm not even going to try and think through that one. I thus have made a rule that there must always be sufficient plates cups and cutlery for everyone to eat or nobody eats. Works pretty good actually.
The sugar bowl must always have its spoon as well. Sugar is consumed in vast quantities culturally. I keep a particular teaspoon in the sugar that they must use to serve their sugar. No spoon no sugar. If left uncontrolled 3 or 4 tablespoons of sugar will be used for breakfast porridge. 'Tea' would be 1/4 cup sugar and hot water... When I offer them some of my chocolate they will say 'no it rots your teeth..' Fine by me!!
One morning the line for serving ourselves breakfast has formed, and it is like a buffet line, first station- a cup of the dry porridge, next stop sugar, next hot water, next milk. We've had our prayer and the shuffle through the 'buffet' starts. I have my own one stop buffet- pour my coffee. I find my seat and get ready for the morning reading with them. A min or two has passed, I look up and notice the line has not moved. It is like there is an invisible wall at the sugar stop and 35 boys can't get around it. 'What's up?' I ask. 'We can't find the sugar spoon... they are looking for it', is my explanation why 35 boys are stopped at the dry porridge. Can you imagine that one little teaspoon has brought 35 boys to complete halt? I ask them 'is there a law that there must be sugar in your porridge before you can add water and get your milk?' Now the thing that was cool about this particular event is that it was like this group consciousness was awoken, a societal light came on. But I could tell it was deeper then the sugar bowl. They all broke out in laughter making fun of each other and them selves for being so daft. All they could joke about for the next several mins was the particular point, they could actually put the sugar in their porridge a-f-t-e-r they had hot water and got their milk. They understood you can scramble the ABC's and everything will work out OK, ACB works just fine as well.
I think one thing I enjoy most in what I do is when you see a concept clicks, they understand or makes sense to someone, when it happened on a group level, practically instantly, it was especially good.... almost as good as when they know that chocolate rots your teeth.
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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You've heard of the swap monster, and the cookie monster... here is the sweet potato monster.
When you harvest the sweet potato you keep the vine as well, cut it into 1 foot 30 cm sections, then re-plant those for your next harvest. When the boys were coming in from the fields with the vines it became trendy to dress themselves in them.
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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Gango was a signatory for our bank account, I was another. Any withdraws requires two signatures. I took the Certificate of Death into the bank hoping that they would allow me to start the process of adding another person and more importantly withdraw money that was in the account. Not a chance.. The first thing I needed was an official letter from Kedesh (me) complete with letter head and rubber stamp (literally , nothing is official without a rubber stamp) telling the bank that we wanted to change the names on the account and withdraw the money. I was told if I did that I would get the money the next day. I come back the next day, Thursday, with my letter. I wait for a few hours. She asks me to bring 'Fransisco' in for him to sign. I have to stop and think 'who is Fransisco??' Then I remember that we had put one of our older boys, Chico, as a third signatory about 5 years ago to cover when I went to the states. I run around trying to find Chico, I see him every few months here or there, but don't really know where he lives or works. I contact a few other boys and they know and it is not far. I drop in his work and he is, 'up north somewhere' 'drilling wells in the bush' and 'He'll be back in a month or two, .. maybe'.
Back at the bank, I'm told this is going to be a long process and they would call and let me know when it would be ready. I call back Mon no answer.. Tues no answer. Tues night I get a call from the bank manager asking me to bring in Kedesh's official documents. I'm thinking this is really going to turn into a nightmare.
We go in Wed. a week has now gone by since the original request. I hand her the documents and she says 'no these are not the right documents' I'm tense now. I said 'I have been banking at this bank and signing checks for 10 to 15 years now. Why is there suddenly a problem?' I noticed she flinched at this comment, which I considered a good sign. She then took that documents back and said 'I will work on it, come back tomorrow'. It is always 'tomorrow' here.
We had a few other things to do while in town so we were doing a bit of running around and of course a up of coffee with pastries. About an hour later I get this call, it is the banker asking me to come back to the bank and write a letter that will 'resolve' the problem. Cool!!
On all my other visits she had been just talking to me in the middle of the lobby, this time I get called into an air conditioned conference room that is colder then it is out side... and it is the middle of the winter here.. She plops down a stack of documents and pulls one out in particular. I notice it has my signature on it, she confirms that. The document is the request, from I don't know how many years ago, that I be a signatory on our account. She then says 'this document never got registered'. I responded 'you mean I have never actually been a signatory on this account???'--- 'yes'.
She then asks me to write another letter, this letter is from 'John Wickes the director of Kedesh' asking the bank to allow John Wickes to sign checks!! She says 'this will need the rubber stamp on it'. No Problemo- got it with me!! This is just a hand written letter and not on the kedesh stationary and that --- magic rubber stamp!!
I walk out of the bank with 4000 dollars and didn't even have to stand in line!! Aint life grand!!
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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the cold makes me happy!!
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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| Posted by John Wickes at | | | |
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