Djibouti Sejour and David's Fifteenth

RRL, otherwise known as Required Renewal Leave is one of the ways that MCC supports us in our assignment. It is an addition to our benefits package that allows us to take several extra days of leave per year due to the hardship of our assignment in Ethiopia. It was granted because of the conflict situations that are ongoing here, but in reality, the day-to-day life in the very crowded and polluted city of Addis Ababa is the thing we most often feel we need relief from. While active fighting in Amhara, and risks of kidnapping in Oromia are still threats, they seem somewhat removed from our life in the city, albeit our travel, especially out of town on roads has been greatly curtailed. 

Les Sables Blancs after the storm

We had spent a week in South Sudan for our regional Rep. meetings, and Rebecca wrote about that last week. While I would not describe Juba as a place I would choose for a vacation, there was a certain amount of restful diversion from routine since we traveled without David, and had a very nice hotel suite to stay in. 

When we returned, it was the weekend before David's fall break. Even though we had been out of the office for a week, we decided it would be good to take our RRL leave for the following 5 days while David was out of school. We had Monday back in the office to deal with the most urgent work stuff and then headed out on Tuesday.

One of our favorite leisure time activities we enjoy is snorkeling. Since most of the East African coast sits on a coral reef we have a number of choices including places on the coast of Kenya, like Mombasa or Malindi. Zanzibar is also a favorite and our default go-to vacation spot. Unfortunately, plane tickets have been pretty expensive to go there of late. 

Last year we decided to try a place that sounded promising: Djibouti. It is very close by plane, about an hour away, and pretty cheap to fly. In fact, we could go there with our air miles. We WhatsApped the place we stayed before and booked a reservation at Sables Blancs, a very remote guest house on the beach just a few kilometers north of a small town called Tadjoura. We stayed there last year and loved it because of the incredible snorkeling one can do just off the beach. 

Meeting of two tectonic plates

I would say that Djibouti is not a tourist destination I would recommend to someone coming to Africa for a vacation for the first time. It is an odd place quite frankly, a very tiny enclave at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. It hosts 5 armies (bases that is)--like the Hobbit. There are Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, and American army bases, protecting this very strategic waterway leading up to the Suez Canal. There is considerable security interest by all these countries in protecting it. 

But Djibouti is mainly desert, an extension of the Afar region of Ethiopia and Eritrea. There is a very small native population there, some Afaris, and Somalis. Islam is the major religion.  It had been a part of Somaliland colonized by the French and remains a francophone country to this day. 

Its biggest claim to fame currently is a gigantic port that provides a huge amount of goods to Ethiopia and other inland countries. This is evident when one arrives and sees the enormous number of Ethiopian trucks on the roads or parked in huge lots around an enormous shipyard full of container-laden ships. 

The main urban center, Djibouti city, had a number of hotels and restaurants, both Ethiopian and Yemeni. It is also like a little Dubai with a number of malls and places where one can buy imported goods virtually duty-free. This was a great perk of going there: we could load up on things like cheese, chocolate, and other delicacies not available in Ethiopia for less than $80. 

For all these reasons we were happy to give it another go, and arrived on a Tuesday morning. To get to our hotel, which is across a rather large inlet (28 kms across) one can take a boat straight across (3 hours) or a Landcruiser around the coast (3 hours). We had planned on the boat but were told there was some concern about the weather so we took the Landcruiser. 

Honestly, when we arrived the sky was cloudless and about 90 degrees (35 C). We stopped at a mall, stocked up on some snacks for the week at the guest house, and headed out by car. The trip is actually quite interesting. One starts by driving on the road that goes to Ethiopia and is in line with many trucks. Eventually, you break off to the North and the trip is sublime, with endless hard rock desert in every direction. There is a place where there is a huge wind farm, another area that is several kilometers of black magma, that looks like you are on the moon. You cross the fault line where a continental shelf is slowly separating from Africa. There are huge caverns of solid magma coming out of the ground there. Then you pass an enormous salt lake, (Lac Assal) the lowest place on the African continent; it looks like an enormous white sand beach, but it is all salt. You also drive along a number of high cliffs that look down on clear blue sea. 

We eventually got to Tadjoura where I got a phone card then the last 30 minutes off-road to the guest house. This place really feels like you are in the middle of nowhere. After driving off-road over a completely unpopulated boulder-covered landscape you descend from an escarpment down to a narrow strand of beach where there are a series of bungalows. This place is not connected to any grid. Fresh water has to be brought in by truck, the electricity is solar or from a generator. Once you are dropped off, there is no way you are going to walk to a town. You would need to go by Landcruiser or boat. 

Sables Blanc is built on one of the few areas of sandy beach in the country, I have concluded, since most everywhere else is rock. When we arrived, we were surprised to see that we were the only guests there, but it is not exactly the season for visiting. May--October can be unbearably hot, and it starts to cool a bit Nov--March. We were there at the end of the hot season. And it was still hot. Fortunately, they have some efficient AC units in the room that they run from 10pm to 6am.

What to do there: I will say there is no place in the world I have snorkeled which has such extensive, accessible coral reefs. From one's room, you can walk 10 meters to the shore, put on flippers, snorkel, and mask, and swim another 20 meters, and find the edge of the reef that extends in each direction of a huge bay for as far as one could swim and even beyond. The variety of fish is staggering, as well as huge moray eels, barracuda, and sea turtles. 

In a sadly ironic turn of events, my GoPro had to be replaced and was in the US, so we did not have it for this trip. I wish I had underwater pictures to show. I think we went snorkeling about 4 times a day. Unlike Mombasa or Zanzibar, you can pretty much go out in high or low tide, the water is always calm and there is no significant current. I think the coolest fish we saw that we had never seen before was the Indian ocean crocodile fish. It really looked like a crocodile sitting on the bottom of a sandy spot on some broken coral. It was at least 1.5 m long (This is a stock photo here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacled_flathead#/media/File:Pez_cocodrilo_(Papilloculiceps_longiceps),_parque_nacional_Ras_Muhammad,_Egipto,_2022-03-27,_DD_71.jpg)

When we weren't snorkeling there were a lot of places to walk along the beach. Much of it is on rocks, that look like cooled magma. There are a number of inlets along the bay going one direction. David and I fished a number of times as we brought our rod and reel. We caught fish on almost every single cast, with any bait or even a small lure. They were small fish, juvenile groupers, and snappers, were the main ones. We weren't fishing to eat, we just wanted to see what we would catch. I was hoping for a barracuda but never got anything big off the shore. 

Walking in the other direction, one mounts the escarpment which offers a commanding view of the strand of beach. David liked to go up there and look for geodes. He crushed open a number of rocks but did not ever find one. All the rocks up there are volcanic, or better described as magma, as there is no evidence of mountains in the vicinity. 

On the second night, we heard it start to rain and on the 3rd day morning, we had a torrential downpour that lasted most of the morning. I could not believe how hard it rained in such a short time. It flooded our room and the hotel moved us to a new one (the room was not badly flooded, but they had spare rooms as we were alone.) When the weather cleared we saw that the ocean had been pretty churned up and a lot of dirt had run into the bay. Also, it looked like some garbage from Tadjoura had spilled into the ocean as well and we could see some plastic bottles floating around. We guessed that this kind of heavy rain was not common and had flooded some places. 

We really got an idea of just how much rain had fallen when we walked up the small road that led up to the escarpment. The driveway down was almost completely destroyed. There was no gravel layer, it was just a string of large exposed stones and boulders, almost impassable by vehicle. 

Nonetheless, by afternoon the dirt in the water had settled and we were able to snorkel again. For the next two days, it rained some in the morning, but nothing like that 2nd night. We enjoyed all the activities we had been doing every day. 

Rooms at the hotel

We went over to a dining area with a veranda for our meals. It was like we had a private chef. What we found really cool, though, is the opportunity to use ALL of the languages we know. Both Rebecca and I speak French so we used that primarily in talking to people we met in Djibouti, but the cook and his assistant were Kenyan and we could speak Swahili with him, which he preferred. Our waiter/cleaner was Ethiopian and spoke Amharic. So we were able to speak French, English, Swahili, and Amharic with different staff at the guesthouse. We were definitely uber-powered in language skills in that place!

In the evenings we played games with David or listened to an audiobook. We also enjoyed reading. One cloudy morning we broke out our paints, which we always bring on vacation, and did a morning doing watercolors (or guache/acrylic). I tried to capture a particularly interesting rock formation I saw that looked like a colonial soldier with a tri-corn hat, hunched over with a great coat on, looking down at the ocean. I have included the original scene as well as my rendition for your critique. 

There was no internet connection except a SIM card I had for emergencies, but otherwise, we were really cut off from everyone. Strangely, that sense of isolation in such an isolated place was a welcome feeling. 

On our last day, we had some concerns about how we would leave. We had booked a car, but saw that the road coming down the escarpment was still impassable. Sure enough, on the morning we were to leave, a small boat came and took us and our luggage from the beach to the nearby town of Tadjoura where our ride was waiting at the dock. I was relieved there was a plan B if one could not travel by road. 

On the drive back we met a stunning sight, it was nothing like our drive there, for almost half the trip we crossed over dozens of places where the road had been destroyed by floods that had rushed down during the big rain. Tadjoura was flooded as well, and when we got to Djibouti city, it was very evident that much of it had been underwater for a day. The place was completely littered with garbage and debris displaced by flooding. 

Our driver explained to us that a cyclone had hit nearby Yemen and the tail of it had crossed Djibouti. The one morning of heavy rain where we were, had devastated much of the country. I could not believe it was not more evident where we were. But I guess it was mostly rock around Sables Blanc, so not much to move.

We stopped for lunch at a Yemeni restaurant for some great fish and galettes, then at the mall one more time, after settling our bill at the in-town office for the hotel. We loaded up on supplies and took an evening flight back to Addis. We felt quite refreshed and arrived back Saturday night. 

Fortunately the weekend before our arrival, we had done some preparation for the weekend of our return. I had to teach Sunday school the next morning, but then in the afternoon, we had David's 15th Birthday party! I had made a piñata the weekend before. This is a birthday tradition for the kids and between the two of them I have made about 30. This year I made a Minecraft Creeper. This is the 3rd year in the Minecraft theme, mainly because I only have cereal boxes to work with so everything has to look a bit boxy. 

David had his cadre of friends over that he really likes--several other boys that he hangs out with regularly, with a couple of siblings along. The adults hung out together while kids played--spike ball mainly, then they did the piñata, sang Happy Birthday, ate cupcakes, and David opened presents. All the kids brought costumes as well, as there was a Halloween party at the SIM compound down the road from us where one of the families that came, live. All the kids went down there after the party to trick or treat. It is an annual tradition at the SIM compound to do this since it is an enclosed area of houses that is safe for walking around.

David and Bereket came back loaded with candy and had a great time. David got some really fun games at his Birthday as well that we have tested out in the last week. 

The biggest thing happening at work these days is buying a new Landcruiser (imported from Djibouti.) Second biggest thing was interviewing four candidates for our young adult exchange program. Third biggest, finally selecting a contractor to renovate our hall bathroom and get rid of the black mold. Lots of construction dust in our future. We've been clearing the decks all day today. Yesterday we hosted youth group, and probably won't be able to offer much hospitality for a few weeks coming up. Hopefully, we will have an update on all that soon. 

October 2023 Rep Gathering in Juba

Our final evening of Rep gathering

Once a year, we look forward to gathering in person with all the MCC Representatives (Country Directors) from our region of East Africa and Sahel. Prior to COVID, we took turns visiting one another’s countries. In the past two years, people have been so drained by work and change that our Area Directors hosted us at a nice resort on the Kenyan coast, to give everyone a break as we held business meetings.

This year, we returned to our normal pattern and our meeting point was no tourist destination: we gathered in Juba, South Sudan. At the moment, it is one of the most challenging places in our region to live and work, though Tchad may be even harder. Perhaps it was good for us to get some perspective on the difficulties of living in Ethiopia. At least we have decent schools for kids and a more pleasant climate!

Wawa and daughter

We have always brought our kids with us to these regional meetings. Unfortunately, this year David’s school shifted the dates of their October break and David had school with mid-term exams during the whole week of the meetings. So, we had to leave him behind, staying at home together with Bereket. We called him a few times a day, just to make sure things were under control, but the two teenagers did well.

Meanwhile, Paul and I were astonished by the mental and emotional lightness of traveling as a couple without kids, and only two carry-on bags. It has been probably 10 years since we went away alone for more than a night. Since we live at the hub of the continent’s best airline, it was also super easy for us to take the direct flight to Juba. 

Traveling light

It was really great to see our colleagues again, many of whom we have known for many years. Anne Marie and Scott have been colleagues since 2014 when they took over as Reps for Rwanda/Burundi. Then they followed us east, currently as Reps for Kenya/Tanzania. We met the families of Fred and Betty (Kenyan, serving in Uganda) and Amos (Ugandan, serving in South Sudan) back in 2018 when the Tanzania program hosted regional meetings. Winifred and Samuel have been serving in Tchad for the past two years.  We also had a new colleague, an interim Representative for Burkina Faso, Cyprien, who comes from DR Congo originally. The regional Admin Assistant Kelly helped with a lot of logistics. Our Area Directors Wawa and Kristen were there with their four kids, who joined with Amos’ two kids to make a great kids’ team. We were sad that David was missing out on the solidarity. But several other families also decided to leave their kids behind – somehow, South Sudan is not the kind of place you bring your children to lightly.

From Left: Kelly, Cyprien, Kristen, Betty, King (partner staff) 
Rebecca, Scott, Amos, Semei (SS staff), Fr. James (Partner staff), Winifred, Paul, Wawa,
Alexa kneeling (SS staff), Fred, Samuel, Mama Gladys (partner staff) and Anne Marie

Kristen and some project participants at WEP

On our first morning, we visited the South Sudan MCC office and met all the staff members. They rent office space from the South Sudan Council of Churches, one of their longest-term partners. The head of the SSCC, Father James, gave us a picture of the many, many challenges facing the country and the ways that religious leaders are trying to help. One astonishing and chilling fact stuck with me: police are given guns for law enforcement and then are paid the equivalent of $3-6 a month—on some months. Yes, you read that right. It’s not hard to imagine what might happen when you give a guy a gun and then underpay him. Another crazy fact – only 7% of the population has access to electricity. Basically, it’s just people who live in Juba, where there is a generator that produces power for the city. There is only one tarmac road in decent repair, heading to Uganda. There are no functional tarmac roads going to any other neighboring countries. Most of South Sudan is inaccessible by vehicle, and the remaining poor roads are guarded by various militias that demand bribes or they will just have you killed before the next checkpoint. The recent outbreak of war in Sudan has sent thousands of people fleeing back into South Sudan, making the humanitarian crisis there even worse. The government is having trouble moving forward on the provisions of the peace accord and people in Juba are very tense, fearing a return to ethnic violence.

Gloria

One major struggle is the huge number of orphans and vulnerable children who do not have any resources to get an education. The SSCC provides bursaries for a select number of children who would have no other way to study. We got to hear a very moving testimony from a young woman named Gloria, whose life completely changed when she was able to return to high school and then university. She now works for a mental health hotline run by SSCC.

The situation on the ground is very difficult. But we were fortunate enough to be staying in a very nice hotel – one of those reviewed by the UN security team and deemed to be secure enough, both for meetings and for staying overnight. Paul and I really enjoyed making use of the nice gym each morning. We had one chance to walk next door and use the pool. 

Mama Mary, a WEP participant

Otherwise, most of our time was spent in meetings with our colleagues. We had time to share updates from our contexts. We discussed a wide variety of issues relevant to our common work with MCC. We had time for biblical reflection and prayer. Being an MCC Rep, with most of us sharing our positions with our spouse, is a very unique kind of mission/development assignment and it's always refreshing to talk with other people who really understand the dynamics we are dealing with.

We enjoyed sharing part of the week with our International Program Director Rebecca, as well as Joyfrida from the security team and Melody, a peace coordinator. Paul and I actually hired Melody for a position in Burundi a long time ago and were delighted to spend a little time with her, now that she has come back to work with MCC.

During the week, we visited another development project, the Women’s Empowerment Program. At one point, this program served refugee women from South Sudan who were living in camps in Uganda, teaching them tailoring skills and giving them biblical and mindset training to help them have hope for their future. When refugees began to return to South Sudan in 2007, the Ugandan Program director got funding to follow them back to Juba. 

The WEP sewing classroom

Now they have places for about 30 women to receive intensive training over 9 months, and then some support to start their own businesses, including a sewing machine for each graduate. We heard about the program, went to visit a shop run by a group of graduates working together, and then returned for some testimonies and a final time to dance and celebrate together.

Amos and his amazing staff team also put together several interesting tourist outings for us. One evening we had a nice dinner at a restaurant right on the Nile. The first thing we all saw, gleaming white in the dark, was a half-submerged river steamer. Apparently, it had been there for many years, getting stuck at a time when the Nile was a no-man’s land and anyone on the river would get shot at. It was no one’s top priority to get that boat free and so there it sits to this day. 

Paul and the stuck steamer

Another day we were able to cruise on the Nile ourselves. It was lovely and adventurous to be out on the river and enjoy the fresh air – which feels so much more incredibly fresh compared to Addis. Well, that’s what you get with few cars and virtually no electricity! We even had snacks on board the boat as we chatted. And then as they turned the boat around, it began to rain. The staff shoo-ed us all down below as darkness fell and the rain became a torrent. It turned out to be a bit of a crazy adventure! We were glad the boat was equipped with a flood light and a guy keeping an eagle eye out in front of the boat.

Our Nile River cruise

On our final evening, we got special permission to enter the protected Mausoleum of John Garang, the Father of the Nation, who never got to see the day of actual independence. He died under suspicious circumstances returning from Uganda in a helicopter, a month before independence was declared. It is a quiet and somber memorial, and yet a beautiful place to visit in the sunset, with a curious pair of ostriches lurking around.

Melody, Mosleys and ostrich
at the mausoleum

All the rest of our colleagues are staying in South Sudan for the rest of the week, visiting camps and humanitarian distributions in remote areas, taking UN flights to get there, and sleeping in retrofitted containers. The adventure sounds fascinating, and we will miss the time to continue bonding with our fellow reps -- but David was waiting for us back at home and tomorrow morning, we are off for some RRL -- required renewal leave. More on that next time.

 

Bonus update: many of you know we were helping to raise funds for our housekeeper Yeshi to do the finishing work on her condominium so she can rent it out. Many thanks to all who contributed. Last Monday, we drove out to the condo to take a look and make estimates on the costs of the needed finishing work -- doors, windows, plaster, plumbing. Here are some photos to get an idea of how much needs to be done.

The Condo building -- Yeshi has a ground-floor apartment

Yeshi and her son Yebetz at the front doorway of her apartment

Paul and Mesfin on the balcony, discussing 
the minimum level of bars needed for security.

More bonus photos from the Rep gathering

Melody and Rebecca

Kelly, the Admin Assistant

Dancing at WEP

Sunken steamer seen from our boat

At WEP

Asosa Field Visit

October is rushing by, but we do have several trips planned and I wanted to squeeze these entries between them so we can report on each one. October is typically a month of travel for us. It is a time to check in on projects after being away for the summer. Education projects are usually in full swing with students back in school. Often we will have guests visiting from MCC or one of our back donors, CFGB to monitor projects or do trainings. 

Also after Meskel (a celebration of the discovery of the 'true cross') that happens in October, the long rainy season usually comes to an end. This makes doing field visits much easier, particularly when we are literally going out into muddy fields. Meskel itself is always an interesting event. All over town, huge bonfire pyres are constructed. Crowds of people gather like we would do in the US for a fireworks display. They wear white if they are Orthodox and bring candles to burn. They sing and pray, then when it gets dark, the huge pyres are lit and as they burn a huge metal cross is revealed in the fire. 

Rebecca and I usually walk down to the large field near our house to watch the event. We stayed for quite a while but left at dark. We did enjoy seeing the many candles burning among the thousands gathered in the crowd. It has a feeling of joy and unity but belies the real state of affairs here as the conflict in Amhara continues to rage, and people are generally feeling fairly pessimistic about the economy and prospects for peace anytime in the near future. 

One big way that these October field visits feel different this year, is that we are really forced to avoid the Amhara region, the heart of the country and the place where most of our biggest food security and WASH projects are located. At this time we cannot drive or fly into Amhara. Although the Bahir Dar airport is open in theory, the town has become a staging ground for Federal Forces, and we cannot really travel out of town if we to go there. All internet and cell phone service has been cut off there for over a month and we cannot even get in contact with our partners there.

Despite that, our work does go on, and in fact, there was a big training planned for last week in another region on the Northwest side of the country--Beneshangul Gumuz. The training was for our food security partners that receive funding from the Canadian Food Grains Bank to promote conservation (low tillage) agriculture. The facilitator, our good friend Neil from Tanzania was leading it and had chosen themes of water harvesting and appropriate mechanization for small-holder farmers. Several of our partners who were not trapped in Amhara were planning to attend, and it was being hosted by our partner Food for the Hungry. 

Mesfin our FS program manager was going, and I decided to join him for the 5-day workshop. It was my first time going to this part of Ethiopia, and I was not disappointed to find that once again, it was like coming into a new world. My last big field visit had been to Gambella which borders South Sudan, but the town of Asosa is quite close to the Sudan border (to the north), and it has a much larger Muslim population than other project areas where we work. 

The flight was short, but because many people are traveling by air in the country to avoid the insecurity of roads, the airport was quite crowded. We arrived on Monday afternoon and checked into the hotel. The weather here is a bit warmer than Addis but not like Gambella. It was still a bit rainy, and I was really struck by the amount of red mud everywhere. It is very red soil in this region. It also seemed quite lush, but the town itself was very run down and it struck me that this area has been economically depressed for a number of years. The other challenge is the prevalence of tsetse flies which are harmful to humans, but make livestock keeping nearly impossible. as sleeping sickness kills livestock as well. 

We were a group of about 20 all said, and we started 2 days of all-day meetings on Tuesday morning. It was good to hear about the work of different local NGOs and several shared about their success with certain water harvesting interventions. We are hoping that experience sharing can promote innovation in different projects. There were also a fair number of 'cautionary tales' where a 'silver bullet' approach was found not to work in all contexts. Building water catchment pools for instance only works if the soil has a fair amount of clay in it to prevent seepage. Plastic lining is a solution but comes at a prohibitive cost for most small-holder farmers. 

On the second day, we focused more on appropriate technology mechanization. The featured tool is a traditional 'maresha' (ox-drawn plow) but with a planter/seeder attachment that can perfectly space corn as it rips a very narrow seed trough in unplowed soil. Neil was the designer of this and it is particularly appropriate for farmers in Ethiopia who have been using the maresha for generations. (The challenge is to get them to only rip the soil one time when seeds are planted and not to turn the soil over in the whole field. Other innovations included hand-turned machines to shuck cassava and maize. 

On the third day we went out into the field to see the work of our partner Food for the Hungry. We started early because the project areas were quite far from the city over pretty rough roads. We had 3 landcruisers and went in a caravan to the sites. It was actually quite amazing to see the work on the ground. Numerous farmers were happy to show us comparative fields where corn cultivated under CA was twice the height of the field cultivated in the traditional way. 

I was particularly impressed by FH's promotion of cluster farming. Farmers in a community trained in CA cultivated land together and some communities had 12 or more continuous hectares of CA fields. It was the largest single land area I had ever seen using CA at once. The economy of scale meant that the community was food secure and had surplus food to sell at the market. In addition, communal farming really promoted social cohesion which was evident when we ate lunch together with the members of the community. They are a mix of Amhara settlers who belonged to the Orthodox faith, and Sudanese Muslims who had been there many years. We shared food with the community, an orthodox priest, a Muslim Iman, and many Pentes (protestants) as well. These are groups that do not get along in other places. 

I was most impressed by Wro Merima, the lead Agriculture Extension Officer in the govt. She was an energetic community motivator who had a ton of expertise on farming and facilitated much of our visit to the fields in the area. But when we all shared lunch, she joined the other women in serving food and coffee. I was struck by her leadership as well as her hospitality. I am sure that a male leader would not jump up to serve food at lunchtime. 

We left the community after lunch and went to another project site where the new maresha was being tested by some farmers. Whether this innovation will work in a region where no one can keep oxen remains an open question. The FH extension officers had hooked the maresha up to to 2 donkeys. They are quite a bit smaller than oxen but did manage to pull it. The maresha is still in the pilot phase here. The idea is that eventually, it will be a kind of social enterprise where a service provider will buy one and then rent his labor out to plow the fields of many neighbors, or maybe on a cluster farm. 

The danger of tsetse flies was evident as I watched the demonstration and was attacked by a few who tried to bite me while I watched. These are not like mosquitos, the second one bites you know it! It is very painful. 

We left the field in the late afternoon and had a debrief the next morning before returning to Addis on Friday afternoon. 

The field visit is probably enough of an update for this blog. We are trying to buy a car for our program these days, which is quite interesting, but will need another entry to do it justice. 

Cluster farm