Sunday, April 5th

 

            Since it has been 2 weeks since the last blog, I won’t try to catch up on everything.  God is faithful and we have been well and without any sickness at all except for some sore muscles from our regular exercise.  It is the power that has been sick.  Apparently there were loose wires left when this house was wired, perhaps in preparation for some wiring in the upstairs that currently (no pun intended) is not in use.  At any rate the electrician that solved our problems said that one of these wires injected an extra 250 Volts into our system and that is what blew out the chargers for our computers and all the lights that were on.

            My charger has not been easy to get parts for and I have had it to charge the computer and then return it to have another part put in and will still have to return it one more time to get a proper case.  It is taped inside a makeshift box at the moment and tomorrow will get a different makeshift box that will allow it to run cooler.  It is running at 15 volts instead of 16, but does the charging job just the same.  Marlayne’s runs cooler but goes out for spells to catch its’ breath.

            Some of this blog will be pasted from emails that have been sent.   We have been to the same church twice now and I like it quite a bit.  The Pastor's English is very understandable to us and the singing is okay, also the announcements are only about 15 minutes.  Announcements can take up a large portion of the service here in Africa.  They include funeral notices, special offerings given by individuals for specific reasons, mail that has come to the church for people who do not have their own mailing address, wedding bans with the future bride and groom standing in the front of the church, and long introductions by those who are visiting the church for the first time telling us where they are from and who in the church they are visiting, as well as long lists of meetings for the week.

            And: “We have had power problems in the town and with our house for over 3 weeks now.  We thought is was just the usual problems with the city power coming and going and being very up and down as well.  A power surge burned out both our computer charging units.  The computers were fine but the little black boxes were toast. So we found a man who could maybe repair them and we used Fred's computer as little as possible while we still had some battery power left.  He would start it up just to get mail and then shut it down again.  My computer just has games on it and doesn't have email so it was not as important and I just stopped using it.  We sent out a message saying we were conserving computer time but I don't think that message got to you.  And of course, Fred was not wasting any of our precious power on something that wasn't urgent so we didn't update his Blog.  

 

And then one night we were the only house that had no lights.  The electrician came the next day and spent hours going over things.  The wiring here in Ghana is BAD at the best of times and this house had open live wires just hanging and in the wind something must have been intermittently touching.  First the power was like a brown out and would go up and down and then it stopped altogether.  So we went to bed in the dark and then in the middle of the night we woke to all the bulbs in the house sparking and hissing.  Apparently the live wires touched again to make double the power and it burnt out all the bulbs.  We didn't have anything plugged in at the time (basically everything was still out for repair) but the pastor lost his cell charger again and this time the TV was toast, but the old fridge that has the freezer broken and Fred cannot fix the light and the shelves are missing from the door - this old fridge didn't die.  It is still out there as ugly as ever.  One thing you'd almost wish to break and it is just fine:)

 

So at this point, Fred's charger is somewhat fixed.  It is taped together because the tidy plastic cover had to be cut off and new insides put in that are just temporary.  It over heats and then has to be unplugged to let it cool off.  But his computer can at least be charged and then used.  The repair man couldn't find anything wrong with mine but it just quits every now and then and  cannot leave it plugged in either.  So I plug it in until the unit stops and then wait for a while and try again.  Not perfect but definitely better than nothing.”

            We have not renewed our visas yet.  I am still refusing to pay the penalty for overstaying and don’t know where that will lead.  Neither have we re-scheduled our return flights.  Our contract for lumber was FOB Takoradi by April 2^nd.  The supplier assured me it would be ready ahead of time in March.  The logs are still coming to the mill and have not been cut into lumber yet.  It is hard to know how much more time we will need.

              

My exhaust system that was poorly repaired started to come down again on the bad road from Obuasi, so on our way to the ‘net we stopped at the repair where we got the A/C done and they are working on the car right away while we sit in the shade.  The welder was obviously a body builder and had arms like tree trunks, so I challenged him to arm wrestle for the cost of repair.  It was 12 GHC.  I think he was the first Ghanaian to beat me.  Many of the men are in the 50-70 Kg. range.  This last paragraph changes tense because it was current when written in the email and past when added to in the blog.

Every time it rains, cars are unable to make it up the hill by our house.  Rainy season approaches and I am making enquiries into a Toyota Tacoma 4 wd pickup.  It is a gas guzzler by comparison but likely will not leave me where the Carina would give up all hope.