|
View Today’s Photos Next
Day’s Journal
Today was another good
day. After posting website updates until
about 1am this morning I’m wondering why I’m the first one up. We’re to meet Robert at Elwa Junction at 9am to look at property in and around
the area. So I wake everyone up
about 8am and find out that Matt, Jan and Mario will be staying at the compound
to work through some Crown planning.
This leaves Dave, Beccy, Gayla and me to look at the properties with
Robert.
Breakfast is, as expected,
good. We have some scrambled eggs,
sweet bread and oatmeal with brown sugar.
Cold water is always good here but we also have hot tea and coffee
(thanks to Dave who brought a lot with him).
Finally we get away and then
call Robert. He’s delayed so we turn
left at Elwa Junction and ride down to the Soccer
Stadium to wait in their parking lot.
The Chinese government has done an outstanding job completely
rebuilding it (look at pictures from prior trips to see just how much was
done). I am quite certain that their
motivation is the large amount of natural resources that Liberia has and
the deep need Liberia has for funds.
I hope that Liberia is not selling its future for the short term
benefits that are needed. My
question is, where were the Chinese when the war was going on and the people
were starving, children were dying and no one was being educated? It seems to me that it was only the
Christian organizations that were serving then.
Robert and his driver arrive
about 10am and we move just down the road toward Elwa
Junction to look at a fairly run down looking building on a single
lot. The lot is one lot off of the
highway and doesn’t look very appealing to me. It looks even worse when Robert says the
owner wants $35,000US but will likely come down to between $20,000 and
$30,000. Then he says that this road
is scheduled to be four-laned soon and the lot will
be connected to the highway. It may
be worth the price given its strategic location. He will do more checking to see what she
will take.
We then left and drove almost
to the airport to look at some land back of the highway that Robert had
heard was being divided up by a family following the father’s death and
would be sold in the future. It was
adjacent to the really nice metal building that the Mennonite’s ministry
has built. After spending some time
there we drove back into town to the property that Mrs. Cato has near the
Baptist Compound. The property looks
suitable for an office, training facility and guest house and has 2 block
homes on it. They look structurally
sound but we have not been able to get inside to look at there are
presently people living in both houses.
The roof on one how would have to be replaced and perhaps on the
second house as well. This is also a
very rocky area with large black volcanic rock sticking up in front of the
first house. We didn’t see a well or
septic system but, with two houses on the property, there is likely as
septic system of some kind. The
property looks to be a full acre as the drawings show which would give us
room to add a guest house at some point.
The cost to drill a well would likely be around $15,000 and the
chance of getting a “dug well” in around all that rock is slim to
none. So putting new roofs on,
renovating the houses, putting in a well and septic system, etc. would cost
quite a bit of money. There are also
lots across the street so the clear view of the ocean will be blocked
sooner or later. Even with all of
that, we still like the location and property and hope that we can come to
a mutually acceptable arrangement with Mrs. Cato.
By the time we looked at this
property it was time for Robert to meet Jan and Mario for a presentation to
(I think) the Monrovia Rotary Club.
Mario said later that the presentation went extremely well and they
had a full house.
We went back to the Norman’s
and I managed to get invitations printed for several governmental officials
that we are inviting to a Monday night dinner and discussion. This was going to be held tomorrow
(Friday) night but we didn’t have time to make the necessary contacts. So Laurence agreed that it would be
better to do it Monday night. I also
need to get a business plan to Christine for the renovation and operation
of the Indigent Children’s Village that we are assisting REAP with. But I had committed to see Shadrach in Gardenersville before we went to the Freeport of
Monrovia to have dinner, take a tour and participate in their international
Thanksgiving Day worship service. I
should also mention that James took us by the school that his twin, 6 year
old daughters, Martha and Mary, attend.
We met the founder of the school and orphanage, Mother Comfort. She looked to be in her 60’s (Liberian
women are hard to guess ages with) and was very well spoken. I enjoyed our conversation and would like
to visit with her again one day.
David and Beccy got their first taste of visiting a large school of
young children. They are absolutely
the most precious kids. They are so
happy to see you and can’t touch and hug you enough. It can be overwhelming. One thing I would mention is that,
although the school building looked to be in good condition and the
children well cared for, when we stuck our heads inside the main school
room it was almost dark. They have
no generator and likely don’t have the money to buy fuel if they did. So the children are working in very
poorly lit conditions. We just don’t
understand in the U.S. what these children have to go through to get an
education. James was talking about
the cost to have his 2 girls in school from 9am to 5:30pm each day (they
are in an after-school program because he says it’s very common to for
young girls to be raped in Monrovia if they are out of an adult’s site for
periods of time). It takes his full
time work and his wife’s small roadside stand income to provide for the 2
girls’ education and for basics such as food and limited shelter. James and Ruth are making sacrifices for
their daughters education that we never have to
consider.
When we left the Norman’s, we
went by Gardenersville to see Shadrach Saywon of
Liberian Ministries. They have never
gotten the ice making business working that the folks at Suwannee Baptist
sent over a year ago. We did a test
on a similar unit back at Chuck Clark’s place a few months ago and
determined that the unit would freeze ice in hot weather but you had to
reduce the 40 foot interior to 1/3 that amount in order for it to
work. So we shipped over some foam
insulation board on the previous container to use to build a wall inside
the container. We talked about some
options and then I had to leave for the Mercy Ships tour. Shadrach is to call me tomorrow with the
prices to build the interior wall.
It is almost 1am here so I’m
going to write about the tremendous experience we had on the Mercy Ships Venetta tomorrow.
I really want Gayla, Beccy, Dave and Matt to write something about
that as well.
Goodnight for now.
View Today’s Photos Next
Day’s Journal
|