Farewell to WCPC (and to Pedro the Chicken)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so let me try to get you up to speed on what’s new at Namumu with a few quick notes…

My homies from the Woodlands have come and gone. The group, made up of four guys, left Namumu on Sunday. And, despite a number of unfortunate events, including power outages, bankrupt airlines, minibus accidents, broken toes and unexpected dips in the lake (all of which are described in detail in Tom’s blog contribution below), I think we had a great time together. The Woodlands Community Presbyterian Church has had a strong relationship with Namumu for 10 years now. While it’s not uncommon these days for churches in the US to partner up with churches or organizations in the developing world for a project or two and then to split, to “love ‘em and leave ‘em”, WCPC and Namumu have kept their relationship strong over the years. What a great example to follow.

And no, technically I did not kill the chicken. Tom did. However, I did chop off the head and the feet, remove the feathers and the intestines, and contribute to the cooking. I look at it as a warm-up for the many chickens I am going to kill and eat while I’m here. After all, I am a man...a man who invented the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal...and brawn. I’ll be sure to keep a kill count for all of you back home.

Some of the boys and I have been hiking quite a bit through the hills around Namumu lately. There are a number of hills surrounding us and all of them make for good hiking. It is very much bush-land, but, other than snakes, I’m told there shouldn’t be any dangerous animals out there. Not this time of year, anyway. There are monkeys, though, I’m told. Clivet and I will be going out strapped with slingshots from now on, so hopefully one of us will bag a monkey soon. I’m sure my chicken preparing and cooking skills will carry over to monkey preparing and cooking as well.

Lest you think the only thing I’m doing with my time is killing and eating wild animals, I want you to know that I’m still working very hard to improve the Namumu businesses. I have a good team with me and things are going well. Our fishing crew is still rocking and rolling, as are our carpentry and welding guys. I’m actually going to camp out with the fishing crew way out in the islands when they leave this month, just to monitor that side of the operation. I’m sure this will lead to plenty of blog-worthy material, so stay tuned…