Election week, no ceremonies week

Happy Birthday, Jennifer Kelly, beautiful daughter of ours!
This week held some disappointments, namely that our closing ceremonies had to be postponed due to the political unrest. Postponed, but not cancelled, so you will be seeing those ceremonies on the blog in the near future.
We begin this blog with a few random, but unique photos. Below, you see another example of the resourcefulness of these wonderful Congolese people. Elections are coming up. There are hundreds and hundreds of individuals running for office. When you are running for office, you have banners made. Lots of banners. Hundreds and hundreds of plastic banners. Then you hang them everywhere. This huge electrical transmission tower serves very well to display some of those banners. We feel that if you want a going business during election time, you should start a banner-printing business. We thought our son-in-law Brad Huskey would enjoy this....he works for PG&E and has climbed such towers....but not with banners, we'll wager.

This little guy below is just an average-size grasshopper we found on the ground of one of our project sites. Unfortunately, he lost his back hopper legs as the man holding him tried to situate him for the photo. Poor little hopper-less hopper.
Today was Stake Conference in the Kinshasa Stake. Afterwards, we had the privilege of meeting little Gabrielle, the daughter of one of our service missionaries who also works at the Temporal Affairs building with us. She just was not sure of that whitey holding her, and we never were able to coax a smile out of her.
We were very impressed with out new camera's ability to take long shots. We were on the other side of the valley when our engineer pointed this out to us. We could barely see it with our eyes, but look at the detail! These are the hollow cylinders that are formed with concrete that are gradually dropped on top of each other as the well is dug. One meter wide, one meter across. Most of our wells are about 20 meters deep, so that means at least 20 of these are sitting on top of each other from the bottom of the well to the top. And one guy gets to be at the bottom digging with a short shovel and filling a small bucket on a rope that is lifted out, emptied, and sent back down empty. We think these people are amazing for their hard work and creativity.
We know we have posted other pictures of our wells being pumped, but this is our favorite. And in case it looks like Sis. B is struggling to pump, SHE IS! It is hard work to prime the pump, and I almost didn't make it without help. This is why the Congolese people have such muscles! They snicker over our weak ones. This well has just been completed and we asked that the contractor allow the villagers to go ahead and begin using it instead of expecting them to wait until the closing ceremony. They need the clean water NOW.
Last week we told you of the colorful latrines, but neglected to take a picture of the blue (boys) one. Here it is! That's Brother Kadi Kadi in the great hat, and President Kiembwe, President of the organization we are partnering with to do the work. He is also a counselor in his Stake Presidency. They are wonderful men and we love working with them.
The rainy season is upon us, and the roads are atrocious. Every rain storm destroys the roads more and more. The potholes are bigger and deeper. Elder B loves the driving and dodging!
We did have one exciting police experience. For background, the couples get hassled a lot by the police here, because they want us to give them money in order for them to let us proceed. So much hassle that President Jameson, our Mission President, had been stopped one too many times, so he called the Police department and made an appointment with the top guy. The interview went very well, the General was very kind and interested in our plight, was very impressed with the work we do here as volunteers, and he offered to give each of us his personal card to use with his phone number if we had trouble with any of his men. Elder B has really been looking forward to using that card....As we were driving down the main street in town one day this week, the policeman up ahead looked down the line of cars and saw us, the whiteys, coming toward him. So he stepped out in front of our car and demanded us to pull over. We do not pull over. That's asking for trouble. We stay in the lane blocking traffic so the other motorists get mad at the policeman for holding up traffic. With doors locked and windows up, he tried to tell us that we had done something wrong. Of course, Elder B tried to tell him that we don't speak French. Using sign language, the policeman demanded to see our driver's license. Did that, through the window. He still wasn't satisfied. Finally we had to pull out our trump card -- the business card of General Olako. Then Elder B casually swerved around the policeman, squealed his tires, and took off. However, this policeman didn't like that, so he had his partner on a motorcycle chase us down. We were at a stop light, so he came up beside us and demanded us to pull over. No go. I was a little panicky by then, but once again the General Olako card was displayed, Elder B asked, "Do you want me to call him?" and the motorcycle cop just sort of faded away. We love this place!!
That's all for this week. Have an outstanding week -- we know we will!