Programming Update

 It turns out when you go to one of world's top failed states, you get Internet even less often than you get power (between 0 and 3 hours a day), and more specifically, none at all for the last week. Go figure, I guess. As such, I've sort of run into something of a backlog of Congo updates. I've some interesting experiences, and have things to say about them, though, so here's what I'm thinking: rather than try to summarize the last 2 weeks now, I'm going to just keep track of everything and then write the updates when I get back to the states. It'll be like you DVR'ed this web page, and then watched it all 3 weeks later. 

 

So I'll be back here with exciting news about what happened two weeks ago in a week or so. It'll be great, you'll see. And totally worth the wait. 

Jeremy, in absentia

Hi folks -

Kim here. I am hijacking the blog without permission just to offer you some tiny little Congo updates, since Jeremy is so incommunicado.

I got an email from Jeremy a few days after the last post with this information:
"We've now met the team of drillers. The main guy, ahundambi, was selected as the leader I believe by congolese folks in the e free church. He then selected 5 others to work with him. He did a good job, most of them have a mechanical or electrical training background of some kind, and they all seem to be pumped to be here.

Yesterday we finally started making material preparation to drill the well. There are a lot of preparations to make! Dig a pit, bring in thousands of gallons of water, make all the tools that aren't already here, etc. We'll spend all day doing that today, and then hopefully the next we'll drill the well, which should be done in one day. I hope so bc I am leaving for the hospital soon and won't be back for 5 days or so--I'd like to see them do it!"

Then, I got a 2 minute phone call last Sunday offering this information:
1) Uncle Jerry & co. were able to drill at least 1 well successfully.
2) Jeremy left almost immediately afterward to spend a week at a hospital in the region.
3) They have no internet there and phone calls are $5 a minute.

Since we're all waiting in suspense for Jeremy to emerge from silence, I thought I might as well pass on these little snippets in the meantime!