Heavy rains pelt­ed us just min­utes after my arrival in Bala­ma on Sat­ur­day (13th) at 1pm.  A small cyclone (hur­ri­cane) is off our coast, and the rains are expect­ed to con­tin­ue for the next 72 hours.  No joy as our solar pow­er will suf­fer greatly. 

These Non-stop “Cyclone Rains” will halt all repairs on Pas­tor Joaquim’s home/kitchen and the Rovu­ma church that were bad­ly dam­aged on Jan­u­ary 9th.

A heavy storm with high winds com­plete­ly ripped off the roof on the Pastor’s house, and col­lapsed part of the walls of both these buildings.

 

Pas­tor’s house after roof blew off. Today rains took the walls too!

 

I just got word by phone (Sun­day) that the Pastor’s house walls are now crum­bling due to the heavy rains! BARRELS of water were dumped last night onto the mud bricks walls, caus­ing them to melt and fall.

 

With lit­tle hope of repair­ing this home in the next 3 days, it will mean a com­plete­ly REBUILDING of the house with a method called “PAO-PEEKY”.

Pao-Peeky uses 16 foot long (4 meter) spliced tree trunks to form the ver­ti­cal walls.  The men dig down about 3 feet (1 meter), pack­ing the posts into the ground to sta­bi­lize them. They then tie the posts togeth­er on both sides with split bam­boo 16 feet (4 meters) long.  This very strong struc­ture now looks like an ani­mal barn until the mud is plas­tered on both sides, mak­ing it a sol­id mud wall that can be paint­ed for addi­tion­al rain protection.

 

This method is more expen­sive than mud brick, but it is much stronger.  Rains can pum­mel the walls, but they will not fall down due to the wood frame. I know this may be hard to “visu­al­ize” so I will take pho­tos as they build it once the cyclone has passed.

 

The cost of rebuild­ing Pas­tor Joaquim’s home/kitchen is esti­mat­ed at about $800.

 

Replac­ing the roof with tin sheets will cost an addi­tion­al $425.

 

The wall dam­age to the church will also have to be replaced using the Pao-Peeky method.  Esti­mat­ed cost is about $500.

 

TODAY it is impos­si­ble to even trav­el by bicy­cle to this area due to the deep mud.   Fur­ther update on this next week.

 

A MARVELOUS CHRISTMAS WEEKEND THANKS TO THE EMPLOYEES OF THE AUSTRAILIAN BASED SYRAH/TWIGG GRAPHITE MINE! 

Twigg’s truck load of food and frozen chick­en and fish was deliv­ered 2 days pri­or to the par­ty. Our moth­ers have to start cook­ing at 5 a.m. on Christ­mas Day in order to feed our 150+ guests.

 

Elves deliv­er par­ty time food before Christmas

 

Over 400 lbs (180+kg) of frozen chick­en and fish were includ­ed in this most gen­er­ous food offer­ing.  Because we have no freez­ers, this part of the offer­ing was dis­trib­uted imme­di­ate­ly, giv­ing the chil­dren a super deli­cious Christ­mas Eve feast!   The chil­dren had nev­er seen so much meet at one time. This was a first for all of us!

 

Twig­g’s “Elves”, with our staff and 2 orphans pose with gifts for our 99 children

 

Jump­ing with JOY on Christ­mas Day our chil­dren watched truck­loads of toys, can­dy, and school mate­ri­als roll into our par­ty area. (We had kept this a sur­prise.) The fos­ter moth­ers were ecsta­t­ic when pre­sent­ed with bags of SEEDS to plant.

 

Note: This year’s 2 Christ­mas goats (no such thing as Turkey around here), were donat­ed by the Jes­si­ca Davis fam­i­ly of Tul­sa, OK.

 

San­ta hand­ing can­dy to our children.

 

THANK YOU SO MUCH TO ALL OF YOU FOR “MAKING THIS DAY” SUCH A SPECIAL ONE FOR OUR CHILDREN, FOSTER MOTHERS, AND STAFF.

BLESSINGS,

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

AND THE BALAMA STAFF