It's Pineapple Time!

Hey everyone I hope all is well I guess it’s been a week now since I posted, I've been busy. Since the container came in it has been full speed ahead with the farming at Newton and in Matindi Village. The stumps have created a delay though…Were chopping them up one at time with axes. I found some really good military axes from the U.S., broke them and got out the good Axes I brought with me in the container, broke them too. Me and Oxford went into town and found a piece well pipe six feet long and headed for a welding shop to cut and fix the axe heads on the pipe. We cut the pipe into three pieces, beat the wood out of the axe heads and had the pipe bent and welded on. These aren’t going to break anytime soon. Its hard work, but more people show up to work everyday.

We have completely stumped about 3 acres with 3 more cleared ready for stumping at Newton. I have about 20 people working for me there currently doing the clearing and stumping. There is probably another 20 working at Matindi Village right now re clearing 10 acres for planting, the grass here grows fast and in the last month it has grown 2-3 feet, if only grandpa could bring his hay equipment over here he would be in heaven.

I went out to Africa Felix juice today for a meeting about the pineapples suckers we have ordered and looked at the pineapples that they currently have planted in the area. The meeting went well and the first load of 35,000 suckers will get here tonight. That’s enough for 2 acres of land and the land cultivation will begin on Monday with a 55hp John Deere…The land at Newton was a jungle and the ground cover is to thick for the tillers to work effectively especially since there are so many tree roots. We are still going to use them at Matindi since the land is in much better shape.

So I brought a trailer in the container not knowing how much I would use it and in this past week it has been unhooked from the land rover for a few hours…It is a great people mover! The first day we loaded up 11 in all and headed to work and it was unpleasant so I said lets hook that trailer up and you guys can ride in it instead, they agreed of course there is a lot more action happening in the trailer than in the back of a car. This way all of the tools stay back there and the muddy feet.

Tomorrow morning all the guys are loading up into the car and trailer and we are going to the beach! The beach is really the highlight of my week. It is for sure a time to wind down from the week and get ready for the next one. Most of Wellington Orphanage will be going to tomorrow since there are some white people here from Pennsylvania and Canada and they are taking a bus load of kids and I am bringing all of the guys at my site for a day of fun in the sun! 

Well it began four months ago and now, it is finished.

Let me tell you where it all began.

It was a hot Wednesday afternoon in Stillwater at about 3:30pm as I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to pay some bills when I got a call from a fellow in Tulsa who was calling to confirm that he had what I needed. The price was a little high, but it was what I needed. 7000lbs of steel shaped like a rectangle with doors on one end and about 40ft in length, “I’ll Take it” I said and we went over the terms of delivery.

Four months have passed now since that container showed up at dads shop to be loaded and packed full of my future and about three months since it left that shop, and about a month since it was supposed to be at my compound in Sierra Leone…

Well after all the delays I headed to the port on Thursday to pick it up pretty early in the morning because I wanted get a good start so there would be plenty of time to unpack the car in the Key and have it out to my site before dark. We made it to the key to find that well the container had not been scanned yet at 11am and by 2 it would be ready for us, we waited at wellington until 4pm and decided today wasn’t the day and on the way down the hill we snapped a tie rod in Johns car…So after we decided it would take time to find the parts they needed we headed back using public transport instead.

That brings us to yesterday when we were actually supposed to get the container. Same story we headed to the port early, ended up in traffic for over an hour and made it to the port at  11:30am. John came with us, us being Jesi, Oxford, David and Titus, and we found the container opened it up and well……everything was just as I left it three months ago when I closed it up. We unpacked the car and had it closed up by 12:30pm and the waiting began for the paperwork on the car and container were finished up, which happened at about 7pm and we left the port in my Landrover! With me driving back through Freetown after dark in the rain…Driving here is just a little bit different.

Oxford stayed with the container and the truck which broke down in the line to leave at about 9pm and he ended up getting here at about 1am and we decided beforehand to unload it at first light. So this morning the container actually made it inside the compound and we had it unpacked, unloaded, offloaded, reloaded, done. It was finished.

So I am waiting on my Sierra Leone plates that I will get Monday and then me, Oxford, and Jesi are heading to Njalla to take Jesi and all of her belongings back that she has bought in Freetown in the past couple weeks for her projects.

I am heading up to Wellington in the morning for a special church service where all of the kids will be performing for us, and then I am going to the beach.

Over My Head

Of course I am talking about the roof, the roof of my chicken coop that is now almost finished. In the beginning I thought, build a chicken coop no problem. But one thing I didn’t realize is that in all of the stuff I have built with dad and around the house I have not designed a roof…

Well The posts I set in the back sank of course, Which lowered the initial height of the roof and after the roofing began with 3 guys on top they sank some more, nearly to the point of being level…So Oxford called in an expert carpenter, Emess’s brother. And long story short he has corrected the roof by building braces similar to what I have seen made in the U.S. like a triangular support system where the peak of triangle is flush with the back of the roof and building. With the help of several of the guys here the work is almost finished and they will work for a few hours in the morning to finished panning the roof.

A friend of mine is going to Guinea for me in the next week or two to buy some baby chickens that are supposed to be top of line English type laying hens, every serious poultry producer here goes to Guinea for the laying hens because they are much cheaper and better quality.

All of the beds have been prepared at newsteps for the vegetables and in the past two days we have planted most of them with Corn, Okra, Beans, and Sweet Potatoes. Speaking of Sweet Potatoes Jesi and I fried up some sweet potato chips tonight that were awesome! But they were not as good as the Onion petals we made that rival Arby’s, we just needed the southwestern sauce they use. We made them with flour, dehydrated milk, water, salt and pepper and they were delicious especially with some Ketchup!

Heading to the beach in the morning to do some surfing and relax after another good weeks work. I have also made ground on my container this week finally, next week just may be the week. 

Three Weeks In

Well I reached the three week mark yesterday and I have to say that its going good here for me physically and mentally. I have not been sick or ill at all since arriving and have eaten some food on this trip that I never have before. My kerosene cooker is still working well and I have a combination of coffee, an omelet, and hash browns or fries every morning. Typically we will eat one other meal per day at about 3-4 just after finishing work and I have hired a cook to do all of the cooking for the boys and she is good, but I am ready to have some of my American meals that are in the container. I have lost about 10 more pounds since I got here, although I think that I gained 10 pounds in the weeks prior to me leaving America.

Mentally life is better for me here in many ways. For example the general lack of electronics like T.V., Smart Phones, DVR, and Satellite among other things can make life a little more sane I guess. Mainly because I am not caught up in politics or spending too much time in front of the T.V. screen, it frees up more time to read and relax in the morning and in the evenings.

I have developed a daily routine here in the past three weeks that I have enjoy. I get up in the mornings by 6-630, depending on how many times I press snooze and proceed to fire up the kerosene stove. Next I set some water on to boil and get the French press ready for my coffee. Next after the water boils I make my breakfast and do some reading before starting my day. I work day for the boys here is from 8 to 3pm and if I am at my compound working then I will work the same schedule on projects and then continue the paper work side after that recording the expenses for the day and so forth. Dinner is between 3-5 and after that I do some reading or homework before going to bed, which I usually do by 9 o’clock.  On days that I go into Freetown it throws this whole schedule of for me but that is how it goes.

Yesterday as I was eating dinner Jesi called me and told me she was going to bring me Basha’s chicken, which may be the best chicken dinner in Sierra Leone. A half is how it sounds, half a chicken cut long ways into two pieces served with steak fries, pita bread, pickles, really good mayonnaise and some extra hot pepper sauce. So after ending the call with Jesi I put my spoon down that was currently in sweet potato leaf sauce and rice and pushed it aside. She got here right after 7 with the chicken and an ice cold coke from Waterloo and I pigged out. 10 minutes and at least 2 pounds of food later I was leaning back in my chair and felt accomplished, like an alligator after eating a wildebeest. 

A day at the Beach!

Jesi and I went to the beach today and had a pretty great day relaxing, eating some good food, swimming and taking a boat ride around the Island in a fishing boat to check some nets with a local fisherman.

We left this morning at about 10am and stopped in Waterloo to pick up some cookies and some cloth to lie on the beach and do some reading. Our Barracuda and onion sauce with rice and potato chips was awesome! At about 1-2 my new friend from last weekend, Tommy came by and I took him up on his offer to go around the Island off the beach in his fishing boat! It was a 20 foot boat with a 5hp engine but actually moved along pretty good.  They dropped us off at the island while they straightened the fishing nets and we walked around looking the wildlife and sitting near the water on some big rocks waiting for boat to return. It did and then back to the main land we went.

I caught some pretty good waives throughout the day just body surfing and worked on my swimming skills. We swam out and around for about half an hour with out touching, or being close enough to the shore to touch for a good workout.

We headed back at about 5 in the evening or so, and we took public transport out and the driver this morning had no phone so we couldn’t call him to come pick us up, so we ended up walking for a while until a taxi came by a ways down the road, and crammed in tight, 4 in front and 4 in back, the car was about the size of a civic…but hey that’s normal here. I Stopped by waterloo on the way back and picked up some canned meat for my omelet in the morning, I am out of spam…

Just Another Update

Hey everyone I hope everything is going well back home. I am doing good here in Sierra Leone and enjoying nearly every minute of it! Work has been going good here at my compound and at Newton Farm.

The chicken coop has risen from the ground very quickly and today we almost got all of the wood and braces done on the roof to put the sheet metal roofing on Monday or Tuesday next week. The sides are done and as soon as the roof is done we are going to level and concrete the floor mid week. I found out some good news today, saw dust and wood chips free here! I am having a friend check on some laying hens this weekend and he is going to get me the prices of the English type hens.

I have not built a building before so this is certainly an experience to say the least. Oxford is good with all of the concrete work, but we have both been winging it on designing the roof and the general structure. I will tell you one thing, it is difficult to build a straight building with bent and warped wood. We do have one level and a square, so all of the main studs are good. We couldn’t find 4x4s so we ended up putting two 2x4s together. The wood is all hard wood and a 12ft 2x4 can be expected to weigh between 25-45lbs! I do wish that I would have paid more attention when dad has tried teaching me his ways in carpentry though, it would definitely come in handy right about now especially with this big rood I am making.

The work at Newton is moving right along and hopefully by the end of next week they will have all of the stumping done and maybe just maybe I will have my tractors at the end of next week. Emess the Pastor I am working with in Newton is having people from his ministry do all of the stumping work which I think is good because all of the funds I spend stay right there in the community.

Tomorrow Jesi and I are heading to the beach and I think that I might try and get a small boat to take that will go around the island if the waves are not to rough and maybe do some trolling while the guy is who owns the boat is paddling away! I will let you know if I have any success catching some big snapper or grouper.

The Foundation

Since I am waiting on my container paperwork to finish processing I decided to go ahead and start building the chicken coup at Newsteps where I am staying. I originally planned to do a small poultry project with about 20 chickens for laying eggs. But upon arriving my views on the chicken coup changed since eggs are a very good selling item in the market and all of the boys seemed really interested in having chickens, so much so that they thought 100 would be a good number to start with! I decided to step it up to 50 and build a chicken coup that will have room to expand later if we are able to easily sell all of the eggs that we are producing with 50 chickens. The coup is going to be 40 ft by 20 ft and 7ft high, we are making the foundation of the walls with stone and brick 3 layers high and then will use 1x12’s and some really nice metal mesh that I picked up at the garage sale I mentioned last week. Yesterday we laid the foundation and today we did the brick work and the boys really enjoyed doing the concrete work. 

Oxford (the guy using the level) is my operations manager and has taken the lead on this project and I have been very impressed with his knowledge of how to set up a building foundation and the speed at which the building is coming together.

I made some of the trips to get sand, bricks, and rock with a friend in a small Toyota Dump truck. These trips can be quite an experience trying to find the right blocks and rocks to use and then its always a negotiation for the price each time we find what we are looking for. On one trip the latch on the dump bed broke and we had to stop by a welding shop to have it fixed. Welders here wear Dolce & Gabana knock off sunglasses for eye protection and usually have on flip flops, basketball shorts and a jersey of some sort, I have yet to see a welding helmet in this country. His welds surprisingly looked decent on the truck bed and they used good metal plates to patch it all up. Only in Africa.

Jesi is here now and it is good catching up on what we have been up to the past few weeks. I cooked up some biscuits and gravy and omelets for breakfast, and for a moment it was like being back in Oklahoma. Oxford came in and I made him a plate of biscuits and gravy and the look on his face when he tasted it was priceless. You know the look, the I want to spit this out but to be polite I am going to choke it down and smile…Solomon was next to try and well he wasn’t so shy about it he ran out to the lawn and spit it out! Me and Jesi thought it was delicious! 

The Last few days

Hey everyone things here have been going pretty good, aside from still not having my container…Other than that its good.

Saturday Elijah and I went out to Bureh Beach to do some fishing and catch a few waves. I fished for about an hour and after losing one of my power baits that looks like a real fish I decided to call it quits and do some swimming. The weather was not so fair and the waves were rather large, like knock you down when they are breaking and skin both of your knees off. That didn’t stop me and Elijah though and we swam for about an hour and hung out on the big rock on the beach until our fish and crab legs were ready to eat. The food was delicious and the coke was refreshing and while we on the rock eating the sun actually came out and shined on us the entire time we were eating.

Sunday I went up to Wellington to church to the combined service where all of the church branches come together at the first of each month and share testimonies of the past month and all of the pastors take terns deilivering the message of the day and then Pastor Hassan finished the message. The service was good, every 210 minutes of it!

Today I had to go into town and I was lucky enough to catch a poda poda with individual bucket seats, the only problem was the was 4 seats per row, and you guessed 5 wet people the crammed in out of the pouring rain…You see this is fine as long as traffic flows well and there is a breeze, but when sitting still for half an hour in freetown traffic it effectively turns into an oven; this is due to no air conditioner and all of the windows being rolled up. Why you ask? Because its raining.

I got back at around noon and helped start the foundation for the chicken coop and hopefully by tomorrow we will have the foundation made.

Tomorrow evening Jesi is coming to stay for a couple days so I made a run into waterloo to get some groceries. I am going to prepare the gravy my Grandma forced me to take with the local sweet bread and whip up a couple omelets Wednesday morning for us to eat! By the way Grandma thanks for the gravy it sounds really good right about now! I have been making omelets every morning with spam, onions, and peppers with some really fine coffee. Life is good.