Let there be light!

 

Power has come back to Bunia! After 7 weeks (or 49 days, but who is counting…) the electricity came on Tuesday afternoon, to great cheers throughout the campus. The area around the school was one of the first to get its electricity back, but by now, most of Bunia is back in business. (Although my French interpreter is still waiting for power at her house.) I understand that the repair is temporary, so I am going to enjoy (no, I am going to savor) the power while we have it and pray that the more permanent repairs can be made soon so that power remains uninterrupted. I celebrated Wednesday morning by taking a wantonly long hot shower, my first in 7 weeks. I didn’t even care that I used so much water. The pleasure was all mine, so I did not consider it a waste.

I have two more weeks in Bunia before I fly out on another plane where they need to know how much I weigh (and will weigh my luggage as well). I will fly into Entebbe, Uganda and then on to Yaoundé, Cameroon via Nairobi. My original flight to Cameroon was cancelled, so I will stay in Entebbe at a Tourist Guest House for two nights before getting a plane out that Sunday morning.

The accounting project is coming along on schedule, at least I think so. All the instructions for the student billing project have been translated into French and we will be practicing the various processes over the next week in a test account. A missionary wife who is a trained accountant has offered to help the finance office with student billing come October when it will need to be done for the first time, so I am spending some time training her in the process and in the accounting environment of USB. The dispensaire project is also almost done, although that project is a prototype which will wait for the new school year for implementation.

I continue to walk around and observe, learning more about Congo as I go. It has been difficult and a bit uncomfortable sometimes being in a country where I do not speak the language, but the people by and large are friendly and helpful, and it has been easier to be here as time goes on. Here are some photos I took yesterday walking around.

 A young girl saw me with my camera and ran after me, wanting me to take her picture and show it to her. After a few minutes, there was a small crowd of children, all wanting to get in the picture. Another picture is of the backyard of these children, with the jerry cans waiting to be filled with water. No running water in the student housing, and for them, it is a convenience that they have a tap right outside their houses. Most households have to walk a distance to get water and that job in many families is the responsibility of the children.

  

And I wanted to show you the coffin maker’s shop, outdoors as  all industries are, making fancy coffins. (Hmmm, maybe my 'hobby' of reading obituaries is getting to me...)

As well, it is summer and that means road repairs in America, a frustration and a bane to anyone taking a vacation/road trip by car. So I thought you might like to see a Bunia road repair project. There was a deep gully in this road, and it has been filled in with construction rubble, and now the road is wonderfully more drivable, at least Bunia style.

Wycliffe has sent me copious materials to read for my assignment in Cameroon, and it looks a bit daunting. I would appreciate prayer that I can get a good understanding of that assignment and be able to work efficiently and wisely.  I have to complete the internal audit review in three weeks, and I gather that there is no padded time in this schedule.  I have sat on the client side of the auditing process for 25 years, so the auditing process is quite familiar to me, but my direct auditing skills are not as fluent.  As well, the books and processes here in Africa are different, and a bit disorienting to an American trained accountant. But I am a bit more encouraged to dig in, as my time with this project in Bunia has given me a better understanding of the grace God gives to do the work before us.