First work day

 I woke up this morning to birds singing. This one was sitting on a wire and let me get close. Anybody know what it is? Breakfast this morning was Gallopintos (red beans and rice), scrambled eggs, toast and jelly, fresh bananas . . . and Nicaraguan coffee.

Don't forget you can click on any of the photographs to see them larger.

 

Before we could start work this morning we had to jump-start the tractor and send someone to borrow a bar and chain for the chain saw. Bud Ritter is working on the tractor with Joel and David, two brothers who live here.

Then about half the team cleared the fence line in preparation for the new fence we’re building. We took out old barbed-wire fencing and cut down thorn trees in the way. Tom Nebgen did most of the chain-sawing, and Bud drove the tractor. Here Bud is pulling the "water wagon." 

The rest of the team started cutting and welding fence posts. Here John Nafziger grinds the end of a post.

We aren’t beginning this project from scratch; much of the fence was installed by previous year’s mission teams, but there’s a long way to go, and we can’t possibly finish it this year. Someone said it might take 2 more years. The orphanage property is about 80 acres, and a large chunk of that needs to be totally enclosed in chain link fence 8 ft. high with barbed wire at the top. That will keep the animals that belong here IN and the people who don’t belong here OUT. We’re making good progress, I think.

 We needed saw-horses, so one of the first tasks was putting together a set of four of them welded out of metal pipe. Josh Houtzel was the primary welder. Helping them are Doug Olson, Mark Hinrichs, Jason Schaad, and John Nafziger.

At one point Tom was felling a thorn tree and Bud drove the tractor past it, so it fell onto the tractor, pinning Bud to the seat with thorny branches. He got more scratches from the “rescue effort” than he did from the accident, though. All of us handling the cut branches shed a little blood today, and I still have a thorn in my finger that somehow made it through my leather gloves.

 Here is Ron Schaad using the power post-hole auger. The ground is so hard we can only go down a foot or so; then we have to fill the hole with water to soften the dirt so we can continue the hole later.

 The old barbed-wire fence had to come out, and that little tractor we have to jump-start every time we use it came in handy for pulling out posts.

 Here Ted Mitchell takes over the chain-saw a while. He did quite a bit of cutting and a lot of loading thorny branches onto the trailer.

We broke for lunch about 11:30; lunch was white rice with a little scoop of chicken meat, squash cooked in cheese sauce, papaya . . . and Nicaraguan coffee.

 Work in the afternoon was more of the same. When I wasn’t taking photos I helped load cut-up trees on the trailer to be hauled way out to the far end of the pasture. Two “vaqueros” were herding cattle, and cattle were grazing. One seemed very curious about what we were doing and came close to us. I snapped this photo.

 Here the welding crew are putting together a section of fence. Shown here are John, Josh, Doug, and Marvin. The latter is one of the teen-age boys who live here. He is now in 11th grade; I first met him in 2008 on my first medical-team mission.

At the end of the day I realized I hadn't seen Jason Schaad all afternoon, and I wasn't sure I had gotten a photo of him. I looked all over for him . . . and found him here:

Supper this evening was (guess what!) rice (again), this time cooked with some sort of leafy vegetable; also baked plantain, watermelon, a delicious fruit juice, and . . . Nicaraguan coffee.