Hello family and friends:
Another week shot and time for another update. If you are getting bored with the updates just tell me to take you off the distribution list.
Let me start by telling you about my trip to church today. I referred to it as my trip because I didn’t make it to church. It all started out as usual, left the house at about 7:00 and headed north. About 20 minutes out of town there was a car with two flat tires. The driver looked like a catholic father and as it turned they were Anglican ministers. So I offered a ride and the wives of the two ministers got in the truck with me. The two of them filled the back seat. They wanted a ride to a turn off where they could catch a Matutu (like a taxi, but driven by young men with death wishes) and then go to their church. I’m not sure the ministers ever go to church. After I dropped them I was about five minutes from the chapel and there were police were directing everyone away from the direction I wanted to go. So I thought I’ll just find another road there. Right! About an hour later I stopped and asked some policemen how to get back to where I started. Had I continued I would have wound up in northwest Kenya where I wanted to be in Southwest Kenya. I’ve grown a lot here, I am not longer afraid to ask directions cause I knew I was lost. I discovered that the slums of Kenya all look alike. The police also told me not to ask directions from just anyone; if I needed mote help to ask at a petrol station. So, by that time I figured I could still make it back for part of church; wrong again. I was about at the same spot I was detoured from before and the traffic was not moving so I texted the Branch President and told him he was on his own for the day. On the way back there were some boys shoveling rocks in the pot holes. Last week they were shoveling rocks off the road that had washed over the road due to the flooding. I gave them 500 shillings last week and 100 shillings this week. You would have thought they won the lottery. They were so excited someone was giving them money. But that’s why they do it, hoping travelers will pay them. One last thing, the birds in Africa will not last with modern travel. I bet I hit 6 birds on the road today. The birds in the US know how fast cars travel and get out of the way. Birds here have not developed that skill yet. They are about 2 seconds too slow. So Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest is being tested here.
Last week there was a guy that came to the office and told me he was collecting money for the local chief and he wanted me to contribute. I didn’t have any money to give him so I told him to come back this past week and I’d contribute. I thought might as well get in good with the chief. Well I was talking to my secretary and she warned me about the guy, her comment was “He may be less than honorable”. So when he came back this week for the money I asked him for some proof that eh money was for the chief. Well guess what he didn’t have anything. Then he wanted me to contribute to a kids college fund. I said I would but I wanted to give it to the kid. He didn’t like that idea either. He wanted to give it to him because the kid lived in the back country. Anyway the upshot of the ordeal, he didn’t get any money from me. Honesty is a rare commodity here. It’s not like some people intentionally lie to you, they tell you what they think you want to hear or they miss lead you without giving it a second thought.
The plant finally came online following the outage. There were many improvements made and production is improving. The guys here have many good ideas and can make things better but no sense of urgency to get things done. So between their ideas and my lack of patience, it may be a workable combination. But in some situations, they haven’t seen how to do make the process better. That is where having worked in the business for 30 years and having spent the last 14 years at a soda ash plant helps. So hopefully improvements will keep coming.
The meeting with the people from the world bank was interesting. Apparently the Japanese banking industry had financed some research here to evaluate geothermal energy. The whole process was not well done. Somehow the final report did not make it to the right people here and was incomplete. So that did not look very good to the people here evaluating the project. It looks like geothermal may be an option here because there are geothermal power generators about 70 kilometers north of the plant. Power here is very expensive so if we could make our own it would be a great financial benefit.
Can’t think of anything else to say, so I’ll stop talking. I have attached some pictures or the house I moved into. It is very nice by Kenya standards but leaves a little to be desired compared to the one is St George.
Love you all
Paul/dad/etc
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