Wednesday saw the arrival of four more workers. Eliesha returned from going out for her Grandfather’s death, and the Finches (Richard, Joelle, and Rachel) arrived for three weeks. All had uneventful travels and arrived safely. Of course the arrival of new ones is always an event because of the things they are able to bring for those here. Eliesha even brought a new set of tires for the bikes, as the originals are getting quite smooth, which is a problem when it’s wet, since many of the tracks we have to ride on are dirt, which become very slippery when wet. Plus with no tread, they are much more susceptible to flats from sharp rocks and the like.
Friday, Terri and I took Rachel to Kobarimo with us. Friday was a holiday here (Independence Day) so there was no school, so there was a limited number of boats to chose from. We picked what seemed to be the best one for us and headed up the creek. The problem with going once a week is that any feeling of comfort that we may gain the time before, seems to have evaporated by the time we go again. But we made it up dry and had a couple of nice studies. Some of our calls were out for the day, (probably because of the holiday, but we had a sweet young girl spent the morning with us as our guide. She couldn’t understand that we weren’t visiting every house, as that was the way it had always been done before. She asked us if we couldn’t come on Saturdays instead, as she is normally in school on Friday.
When we returned to the landing, for the third week in a row, the boat we had paddled up in was gone. The boat we took back down was actually a little wider and flatter, but the sides were also lower, so we only had about three inches out of the water on either side, which meant that we couldn’t let the boat rock very much or we would have been instantly swamped. We were doing pretty well until we ran up onto a stump or something that was only slightly submerged, and we had quite a close call, but we arrived back to the landing dry once again.
Two buses passed by just before we reached the landing, but once we got out and tied up the boat, there were no more coming, so we started walking back. The farther we walked, the darker the sky got and we could see a curtain of rain coming in the distance. I said I thought if we walked fast, we could make it to a bus stop up ahead, but then saw it was coming too quickly, so we went underneath a ‘high’ house we were passing and waited for the rain to pass. It wasn’t raining real hard, but I could see over toward our house, it was pouring, which is just what we needed. It finally stopped enough and we walked into Kumaka, only to find the parade just about to set off for close to where the house is. I told Terri I had seen a few buses out on the other side of the parade gathering and said if we walked back there we could probably catch a bus. But as I started to walk back, I saw the parade was already setting off, so I just turned aside and waited for them to go. But Terri and Rachel didn’t see me, so they kept walking, and at one point were walking along with the parade. But they did the power walk, and soon were out ahead but then had to keep up that pace to keep ahead. After they had walked about ½ a mile, Richard and Josh came along on a bike, and Richard got off and Josh took Rachel home and then came back and got Terri, before returning for Richard.
I on the other hand, decided just to wait in Kumaka for the parade to have gone. I checked on the boat and saw that it had a good bit of water in it, so I bailed that out and then started out on the bike. Unfortunately, the parade hadn’t gotten as far as I had hoped, so I had to keep stopping and waiting for it to get ahead. Finally they reached a point where there is a back street running parallel to the main one, and I was able to get out ahead of them. When I got home, I found that it had indeed rained heavily, and the top tank was filled, and the bottom ones were about ¾. Since then we have gotten a bit more so they are more like 7/8.
The Finches have gotten right into the swing of things here, with all of them having been out for long trips on the bikes with others here, Richard has had a long day of far walking, and Rachel has done the canoe thing.
We are all well and thankful for our recent rains.
Hope you are all well also, and please drop a short email when you can.
