Palmgrove has a few small enterprises that are beginning to bring in money, not much though, but it’s still better then nothing. The Palmgrove construction crew are out almost every day, doing work with the loader and grader. At this time of the year it’s often raining, so at times they have to wait a few days for the ground to dry. They really need someone to teach them how to use the equipment properly, they keep misusing it, getting flat tires and minor breakdowns that really shouldn’t be happening. Paul Vetter has to constantly remind them to grease the machines and do minor repairs on the equipment, otherwise they would run them till they stop moving. They are bringing in a bit of money, but with the price of fuel and all the minor repairs, they are barely keeping their heads above water. That’s a strange thing, you would think that in an oil rich country like Nigeria they would have reasonably cheap fuel prices; but the price is between 70 to 80 cents per liter, the same as back home.
We have a few pigs in the barns, it’s a small start but at least it’s something. They are the thinnest, scrawniest looking pigs I’ve ever seen, I don’t know how they survive. The small piglets run out of the pen through some of the many holes, but they always seem to find their way back safe and sound. They seem to have a heyday, running around the barn chasing each other. The hens are almost ready to lay, but unfortunately, due to this wet season, they got some kind of disease and now they have to be vaccinated. We lost a few of them. In a few weeks the rest should start laying. The broilers are growing up fast, the mature ones are selling quite well. If we could get a few more started we could have a small but steady income. However, we will have to do a bit of maintenance on the rest of the barn to make more room for them. There are so many small projects like that, that one doesn’t know where to start.
I finished the second roof on the chicken barn container, this time it looks a bit straighter then the first one, live and learn. Now Arit, the women who looks after the chickens, will have a nice dry place where she can store feed and supplies. In the picture of the container, you can see a tall papaya tree growing next to it. It was within easy reach, so we sometimes stopped during work to eat one when we were hungry, that was a blessing to have.
At the end of the day, I often look back and think of how much I’ve accomplished. Sometimes it’s depressing to see how little actually gets done. Back home, when we have a power outage for half an hour, we worry about the time that was lost, deadlines that are not going to be met, customers that wouldn’t be too happy, etc. Out here, there is always tomorrow or the next day or the next, and if that doesn’t work, then next month works just as well. It’s easy to fall into this slow easygoing lifestyle, but if we do, we know that we wouldn’t accomplish much of anything, so we have to find a balance of some kind.
The electronic world has found its way to Nigeria. The ‘in’ thing right now seems to be cell phones, everybody is going around with one glued to his ear. The way they do it is, you have to buy a card, which has so and so many minutes on it; once you use it up, you can only receive calls until you buy more time. Every time we want one of the boys to phone somebody for us they’re out of minutes; that is so typical!
Eddy Vetter was working on the aerial for our mobile telephone. He was trying to figure out why we weren’t getting any signal strength with a 25 ft. external tower. He asked one of the guys who had set it up, why he had pointed the antenna towards the northwest. He said that, in that part of the sky there was a big satellite, you could see it shining brightly every evening. Edward explained that what he was seeing was actually a planet or maybe a bright star, not a satellite, also satellites don’t sit in one part of the sky all night long and that mobile phones don’t work off satellites, but on land towers. You just have to wonder how they get their theories mixed up like that!
The past week we have had electrical power for a few hours every day and at night too. You might not think that it’s a big deal but for a country like Nigeria, it’s quite an achievement. I think they should declare it a national holiday. The best word to describe their power supply would be the word randomly. When the power is on, the voltage is ways below what it’s supposed to be and the phases are very unevenly divide; but it seems to sort of work. Such it is around here.
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