Welcome to Yams Farm Wharf City



The kids were excited to see the map

Wow, a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks.  I am now, officially, in Africa, specifically Sierra Leone.   My Gateway group didn’t go directly to the ship, instead we drove an hour inland to a nice guest house where we stayed in dorms (men & women).  For the next 2 weeks we worked with a local church & school at Yams Farm Wharf City.  During the week, the one roomed church is school for 271 children divided up into 6 classes.  It was organized chaos.  A group of us spent time in the school going around to each class & showing them a map of the world, most didn’t even know where Sierra Leone was or what the blue stuff that covers most of the map was.  It was fun seeing their excitement & wonder over something as basic as a map of the world.



The kids getting ready to go to school



Before we had arrived at Yams Farm, we asked them what we could help them with, what did they feel they needed the most.  Pastor Mark, the local pastor & head of the school, told us they needed a bigger school.  The last Gateway group in July had helped them build latrines & since then their school has doubled in size.  The new school buildings were going to be in an L-shape around the church. 

Making window blocks

Yams Farm makes their money by selling sand that they harvest from sand bars out at sea & bring them in by large canoes.  They also sell rock & charcoal & bricks.  All our building materials had to be made, from mixing the cement for foundations or mortar to making the bricks for the walls.  A measured amount of sand was piled up & mixed with a bag of cement.  If it was for a foundation, we would add rock to the mix before adding water.  The cement would then be shoveled into a large pan & passed down the line to be dumped in the mold (usually the ground).  Bricks would be mixed with a different combination of sand, cement & water before pressed tightly into a mold to form it & then left out to bake in the sun.  If it didn’t rain, the bricks would be ready in a week or so.  If it did rain, the bricks could be ruined because the rain would wash the sand away. 



Getting water from the well



Water for the worksite has pulled by hand from one of the local wells.  We had 2 50-gallon barrels that we loaded in the back of one of the landrovers to carry the water up to the worksite.  Often the local kids would come out & help us, they loved to be useful & we loved playing with them.  Water runs were an enjoyable time because it was a chance to cool off from the heat.  Not only was the well in the shade, but driving 50-gallon barrels full of water uphill on a very bumpy path would leave you very, very wet. 



The group on the buried rock- before it was buried

The heat was impressive.  In the morning, it would be pleasantly warm, but soon it would heat up & the humidty would rise.  Our worksite wasn’t shaded for most of the day & often the clouds didn’t offer much relief.  A slight breeze was a welcome joy as we paced ourselves to prevent injury.  It usually stormed at night, which made things nice & cool for sleep, but the red clay we had to move around would be wet & heavy from the rains the next morning.  The ground wasn’t always helpful.  Numerous times we came across large rocks that we couldn’t move.  The first one was in the lower building & a debate arose over what to do with it.  After we prayed over the situation, God told us to dig a hole, roll the stone in & bury it.  So we did.  It worked out perfectly!  The local workers were amazed, Pastor Mark told us they would have never thought to do something like that, they would have hit it until it was small enough to move or fire it.  We got to see what “fire” a rock was when we came across a rock 3x larger than the one we buried.  We gathered wood, some diesel & built a fire on top of the rock to heat it up.  It made the worksite a little more hostile with the heat & smoke, but we were assured it would be worth it.  The goal was to let the fire burn all night & in the morning pour lots of water on it to crack it, but the plans of man aren’t always the plans of God.  That night we had the biggest storm yet & we were worried that the rock wouldn’t be hot enough to crack.  To our surprise the next morning we arrived on the jobsite to find that the rain last night had caused the rock to break.  God was so good that He decided to help us out by providing the water so we wouldn’t have had to carry it up!

Slowly over the past week the walls of the 2 buildings were growing.  The lower building had most of the walls done & the floor ready for cement.  The upper building finally had all the foundations poured & the walls starting to go up.  We moved a lot of sand, a lot of rock, a lot of water & a lot of brick.  We knew that we will not finish the project before our 2 weeks were up, but the progress is encouraging & we know that it will be done before the ship leaves Sierra Leone.



My Krio teachers



The goal for us was not only help build a school, but to put what we learn during our time in Texas about relationships & hot & cold climate cultures to use.  Often times on the job site there were too many people trying to help, so sometimes you would stand off to the side & watch.  Those were perfect opportunities to interact with some of the local women & children.  My first day, I found myself with nothing to do & saw a woman sitting next to a fire cutting onions.  I sat beside her & asked if she needed help.  Soon I found myself cutting onions & talking to the women as they cooked rice & beans for the construction workers.  Mariama, the lady who was cutting onions, then declared that she was going to “learn” me some Krio.  My education had begun & soon I knew basic phases & could understand most of what was said, as long as they spoke slow.  Mariama instructed the women & children to only speak Krio to me.  They were so impressed when I would greet them in Krio. 


I know this update is long & just skims the surface of our field service.  I will try to tell more about it later on.  Thanks for all your prayers & support, they really do mean a lot to me.

Blessings