Dear family and friends:
Another week’s gone. For the most part, weeks go fast but there are some days that just go on forever. I’ve forgotten to mention the flamingos have returned to Lake Magadi. It is the rainy season so they are here. When you look out across the lake it looks pink. There is some kind of fish that lives in the water here that can survive in high alkalinity water. So that is what the flaming eat. There is a group of scientist coming to study the fish this summer. As it turns out, one of the scientist is from the University of Wyoming. So I sent him an email and told him there was a UW fan here and we would welcome him. The water has a Ph of about 11 which is pretty high for normal life to exist in. So that is why they are coming to study the fish.
This week I signed some scrap passes for employees to remove used conveyor belt from the site for personal use. The employees in the US would use conveyor belting to put in the beds of their $40,000 pick-up so they didn’t get scratched. I can’t imagine what the people here would use it for. Some ideas come to mind; it could be used for roofing or wall material. There are some houses here made out of corrugated metal siding but many are literally made out of grass and sticks. The conveyor belting would go a long ways to keeping rain out of the house; or flooring so you don’t have to walk in the dirt all the time. We just don’t know how good we have it.
Today in church the Branch President (also first counselor in the Stake Presidency) asked me to give a talk in general priesthood meeting next week. I guess he likes what I’m trying to do with home teaching. Communication here is terrible. There few if any land lines in homes. So phone books are unheard of. And keeping up with cell phone numbers if out of the question. So organizing home teaching is difficult. What I’ve done is divided the branch into the two areas. Identified the active elders assigned they Jr. companions and then divided up the ward among those companionships. Pretty straight forward I thought. But when you get to how to contact them that is where the problem comes in. Not only are phone numbers difficult but addresses are like “Nairobi”, or “Langota” or “Rongai”. Not much to go on in an area that has 3 million people. So today in priesthood all we did is collect phone numbers. I printed out a home teaching roster and began filling in numbers. I gave the two sets of full time missionaries copies last week and ask them to fill in all the numbers they knew. The Relief Society is also helping. So I guess he likes what we are doing and wanted the rest of the stake to try something similar. As you can imagine, home teaching struggles in the stake.
So anyway, I told him I couldn’t do it next Saturday because representatives from the World Bank are going to be at the plant. They sponsored a study on geothermal energy in the area and want to come see what has been done with the information. There are geothermal turbine generators north of the plant where the water is much hotter that here. In the Magadi area, the water is only about 85 degrees C. So it will be an interesting meeting. Nothing has been done. I didn’t even know the study had been done until a guy invited me to sit in on the meeting. Will be interesting to see how they react when they find nothing has been done after their investment into the study. We will move it forward now because our energy costs are very high compared to the rest of the world.
The outage is finally over. We will have a review meeting this week to discuss what went well and what needs to be changed. In the early days in Green River there were month long shutdowns to complete maintenance work but those have been shortened to five days and everything just goes crazy and the work gets done. Here they have never tried to shorten the outage. They just expect it to take a month and then take six weeks. So a 10 day outage was a big change; it should have been completed in5 days. The group here have never been taught that work needs to be completed quickly. The expectations have never been set very high. The expectations of the guy that asked me to come here, are that month long outages are a thing of the past.
Next week I will be moving into a different house. The one I’ve been living in is for plant guests that come for a week or so, not long term employees. So it is one of the nicer houses on the site. The one I’ll be living in is not much different, just arranged a little different. It has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, and a very nice gazebo/picnic area. So it will be fine. Just a different house.
Went rock climbing on Saturday. There were three guys from the local village that showed up to climb with me. They think climbing is a hoot. They are pretty good for never having climbed before. I asked if they knew where there were more rock faces but they couldn’t come up with anything. But on the way home from church today I saw some cliffs. About 15 miles from Magadi at a place called Ol Donyo Noyke. I will see if I have to get permission for the tribal leader to climb there. That might be interesting. I also need to get a drill so I can bolt the routes or at least put in anchors at the top (don’t want to pull a Kimball).
And last but not least, the old white guy was the guest of honor at the 10K run on Saturday. There was a charity run for a hospital in Nairobi that treats children heart problems. I didn’t run but I told them I would run next year. I haven’t run much since my near death water skiing accident almost two years ago. But I did run three minutes last Thursday and my leg has been sore since then. I just need to start slow and add mileage each week. I’ve been exercising a lot, just not running. There weren’t many adults running with the kids so I told them that they need to exercise all their life, exercise is not just for kids.
Anyway I’m done. Hope everyone is doing well. I enjoy your emails so feel free to write me.
Love you all
Paul/Dad
PS for those of you who forgot, it was Debi’s birthday on Saturday. It may not be too late to wish her a happy birthday (435-669-1735). I went through the normal routine to get her a gift from me. I called Shena and ask her to do my shopping. She always has been my favorite first born.
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