March 1 and 2, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday I woke up to a cloudy day and a small dripping of rain. Enough rain to make the concrete porch damp but not enough to make puddles. This is unusually early for rain.  The kids that broke into the house had not taken immersion heaters or the left over oatmeal. I had hot oatmeal breakfast and worked on cleaning the house until the sprinkles stopped. I walked to the Jimeta main market and found the money changers. They offered me 168 Naira per dollar at the first two places. I went around the corner to another one I had used before he offered me 168 also. I told him I would go back to the first money changer that offered 168 so he upped it to 168.5. In Abuja they were giving 167. Last year it was at 157. After the money exchange I went to the Air Tel shop to get 5,000 Naira in recharge cards. This will get me 3 Gigabytes of data for a 30 day period.  Last year, if I added time before my bytes ran out they rolled over into the next 30 days. If that works this year I will be able to spend another 200 Naira which is the minimum of data for a 30 day plan and will extend the remainder of the 3 GB for another 30 days.

  

I bought a new mop for the house and some screws to fix the bed that fell down this morning. The new mattress is tight in the frame and pushed the frame apart. I replace the 1 ¾ inch number 8 screws with 2 inch number 10s. It seems to be holding. I decided to walk up the Micoh store to buy more food. Micoh is about twice and far as City Market but their prices are on average a 10 or 20 Naira less per item. On the way I noticed a young man playing with a live Cobra. I watched for a minute before remembering I had my smartphone and got it out to shoot a video. The boys had stopped playing with the snake and the one picked it up and put it around his neck. Watch the boy on the right when the boys with the Cobra walks toward us.

I got to Micoh and found out they had closed this store.  So I walked on to Yakubu Shopping Mall (A building with a small store and a new pharmacy). There I got more food and other household items.  I now have enough food for a few days. I need to get back to the Main Market to get parboiled rice. They had a two pound bag of Uncle Ben's but wanted $7 for it. Last year I got parboiled rice in the main market for half that price. In all I walked just over 5 miles on Saturday. Still forgot to buy new flip flops.  If I had known earlier the canteen at DRACC had a nice selection.

Sunday is going to be a lazy day. I got up and went to services at the Jimeta Cathedral which on the same compound as the house I stay in. The service started at 8 am at 10:50 the sermon started. The service started with a baptism after the opening hymn, prayer and confusion (I think it was the confusion. Today is a combined service so it is all in Hausa. Then we had a wedding. At first I thought that they were blessing a Saturday wedding which is a normal Sunday activity. But to day was an actual wedding.  The Yola Diocese Bishop Amos Yakubu was presiding today. After the wedding they started the installation of new officers for the Adamawa State Boys Brigade. This took well over and hour with much pageantry and various dignitaries marching in. I had not brought a bottle of water. By 11:30 when Bishop Yakubu started the sermon. I was parched and left during the offering to get some water. 

Pastor Ruth and some of her congregation stopped by the house as I was downing a bottle of cold water. I had hoped to get to her service. Usually, I can leave at offering from the Cathedral and make her service. Not today. She gave me a musical Christmas Card she had been saving.  We then went over to say hi to the others at the Deaf Centre. Say hello is about as much as I can do.  Since, the last time I used ASL was last year and I only have the vocabulary of a two year old my communication skills are limited. We wrote notes. I am hoping to spend some time on review of ASL videos I have and maybe get to the three year old status. For those of you who are new to my blog. Pastor Ruth is the first Deaf Lutheran Pastor here in Nigeria. Maybe the first Ordained Woman Deaf Pastor in Africa. There are several women preachers but I have not yet found another ordained pastor with a major denomination. She was ordained last February at the LCCN National Convention and installed as a pastor for the Jimeta Cathedral. She had finished Seminary 20 years earlier but at that time they were not ready to ordain a Deaf women. Even now the Bishop in her home Diocese would not approve her for ordination. When we read the constitution of the LCCN it only specified that a Bishop approve her ordination. We moved our efforts to the Yola Diocese where she is the Director of the LCCN Deaf Centre and where she has held services for the Deaf at the Centre and at several other churches.  You can read about her in my previous blogs.  

It is now Sunday at 3 PM the power just went out and I am waiting for the Archbishop's son-in-law to come over and pick up some clothes and stuff that I brought for Paul Babba. Paul is the Archbishops son. He lives in Mississippi and sent me a box of shoes, socks shirts and backpacks for his sister. The internet is jumping between 2 G and 3G but mostly 2G or no signal at all. I am downloading a driver from my phone to connect to my computer. It is 10 Megabytes. At home it would take a few seconds. Here it failed at 70% done after over 3 hours. He finally, showed up here. He had driven is little 100cc motorcycle from Numan. At the city gate military check point he had to leave his motorcycle and get into a three wheel tuk tuk. I forget what they call them here. In Thailand they are called tuk tuk. They have replaced the motorcycles that were the main taxi here. The Boko Harem has used motorcycles as suicide bombs so motorcycles are not permitted in Yola. I call them bumble bees. They are yellow and black like a bumble bee.

If it made the news in the US, there was an attack in Northern Adamawa on Thursday. The Governor went up to give his condolences to the families and gunfire in the area made him turn back to Yola. The dangerous areas are three to four hours from here. In the northern most local government areas on Adamawa State. All of Adamawa State is under emergency law and you are suppose to be off the streets by 7:00PM. I hear trucks and other vehicles until around 10 PM. Then it get silent. Only dogs barking, a cat growling and a most irritating night bird. It peeps about every second and likes the Neem trees around the house. It is a high pitched like fingernails on a chalk board peep or a squeky hinge. I am now on battery power and the download is only 37%  done. My only other task today is to get out the mosquito net,rinse out the dust and hang it over my new mattress.

Power came on sometime during the early Monday morning. I did not get up until after 6 AM. I had so much trouble with the internet on Sunday I will give it a try today. The snake video downloaded in only about 10 minutes.