The New Day church is just outside the fence, so takes a few minutes walk through the field to get there.
We were the first ones there. The "pews" are logs set up as benches. (Most of the American women take folding chairs rather than sit on the logs, since church lasts from 9:30 to around noon. I was very thankful for my folding chair.)
Cambree
This little boy looks so solemn.
Erin played the flute during the church service.
After church, we had lunch and then got to work on more fabrication. We had decided to get all of the laminations finished before trimming out and smoothing the sockets in order to cut down on days of itchy carbon dust. By the end of the day, we had 5 laminations completed. I also filled and modified 2 more of the casts that were below knee amputations from the Choma patient group...this still left 2 above knee casts from the Choma patient group that had prostheses already. Mwilmia was the man who had a truck to drive to the Choma clinic, and his prosthesis that is about 5 years old had a small crack in the socket. Beatrice has had her prosthesis since the 1990s, so it was quite worn but as far as Chris could tell it was functioning fine. This was very difficult for Chris and I to have to choose who we could not get to. Above knee prostheses are more difficult and take more time, so that's why I chose to do the two below knee casts. The 2 people we weren't making new prostheses for did have an existing prosthesis at least. I felt bad that we would have to tell these two people that we didn't have time to make them new legs, but I knew we were already pushing the limit on how many we could possibly make and have materials to do. We had 17 legs to make at this point.---[enter feelings of stress here, at least on my part]
An above knee socket set up for alignment to get ready for the 2nd lamination.
One of the work benches.
Chris working on a socket.
I'm not sure why I'm frowning here.
Plaster modification on one of the below knee models.
John's day was fabrication also. He had several eyes completed and was expecting a few people to come back on Monday for fittings. He had some trouble with the paint taking much longer than usual to dry on the eyes, so he had to set up a fan overnight to help the paint dry.
John working on the delicate painting process for the eyes.
Dinner on Sunday night was American Fellowship night at The Ark. Everyone brought a dish for Mexican food. The food and fellowship was so good! After dinner, several people played cards. Erin and Bryan joined in on the card playing, but John, Chris and I went back to work for a few more hours. With the extra lighting that Blu set up in the garage, this enabled us to get in more work after dark.
There had been a lot more bees around New Day than usual. There was a hive in an old tire at the back of the garage that they had used poison on to rid of the bees before we came, since we'd be working in the garage. Well, yesterday the bees started coming back, swarming around the back of the garage. There kept getting more and more throughout the day, and we discovered they were building another hive in the tire again.
Sunday night, when the bees were not swarming around, Blu called a guy he knows, Geoffrey, who has taken care of bee hive issues in the past for them. Geoffrey came around 8:45pm and was wearing long sleeves and long pants. He had us turn out the lights in the garage, and Blu used a flashlight to light a path for him. Geoffrey picked up the tire and carried it out of the garage into the field behind the garage without waking the bees or getting stung at all. We were so thankful to get rid of the bees and thankful no one was stung!
*Next post: Monday, May 18: More eye patients!
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