Air Planes, Denge Fever, and Mr Squirrel

   Life here in Bolivia is continuing to not be boring! However, here are a few pictures of this last month.  

      The front doors were put up and it has been so nice. It was difficult for people to adjust to the idea that the construction site was now a house and a home, so they would just walk in without much, or any, notice. There were a few, ummmm, awkward moments! Now that there are doors though, people are very polite and knock before entering. Somehow doors make a building feel much more like a home, even though there are no windows yet. 

Steven varnishing the doors

   The annual inspections are due on three of the planes, the Turbo 182, the 182, and the Mooney. The inspections need to be done for paperwork to be able to import the planes and fly here once again. Please keep the aviation project in your prayers. The aviation project has been operating twin engine planes in Bolivia for the past year, but the government has not been giving permission to operate the single engine planes to operate in the country. The single engine planes are the planes that can go out to the strips in the jungle.

Natalia, a student air plane mechanic from Colombia
helping with the inspection

Sometimes smaller fingers are needed for the little things!
Natalia has smaller hands than Steven, but my hands are smaller still
so I do what both of them can't very well!

And then we were visited by many mosquitoes in our house and yard... it was like a moving black cloud for awhile, and they shared a virus with both Steven and I. Denge fever. Its symptoms are very high fever, headache, muscle pain, bone pain, and weakness. It is usually not fatal, only in the very young and old, but it still is not nice. We were in bed for a week, and then were in recovery for a week, and now at the end of the third week we are feeling almost back to normal. Thankfully we didn't get it as bad as some people. There are different strains, and either we got a 'good' kind, or God was merciful. 

Steven with a fever of over 104 F. We were trying to get his temperature down

Hydrotherapy using frozen bags of tamarindo (tamarind fruit)
as ice bags.

While we were sick we didn't eat much, and so gave away most of the special food I had made that Friday (we fell sick on Friday night). Bit by bit as we recovered energy, we also recovered appetite. A sur blew in, a cold south wind, and made cooking more difficult. My stove is under a south facing window, and the wind blows the gas away from under the pots.

Making a wind shield, trying to keep the gas under the pots so that it will cook.

Yummy food : ) Steven so far likes my cooking!

So after the sur and being cold and blown on for several days, we were very grateful for a donation, enough to buy wood for windows. However, the truck was loaded with another missionaries construction material and needed to be unloaded. In trying to turn into their driveway, the truck got stuck in the newly back filled water line ditch.

Stuck Truck

Using the backhoe to help get the truck out. 

Eventually we had to unload the truck to lighten it enough to pick it up out of the ditch. It was a job, since the truck was filled with tile, cement, and stucco, but the workers helped.

The wood for the windows!

And as health came back, so did work for Steven. He helped fix the alternator and some other things on David Gate's Twin Comanche, which he is flying up to the US now with Herman. Lincon and Monica went with them as far as Guyana, where they are going to be married this month! Very exciting seeing as they were engaged around the same time as Steven and I were. They are a very nice couple.

The Twin Comanche

With a farewell to our friends as they headed to other lands, it was time to return to inspecting the planes.

Looking in every corner and hole that can be looked into.

Smile Steve!

The most important inspectors tools, a mirror and a flash light to be able to
see into all of the interior and structure of the plane.

And last, but not least, is the continuing story of Mr Squirrel. While he was a fuzzy neighbour in the front tree eating ants and bugs, he was very nice. Now he has discovered a different type of food that also catches his fancy. Avocadoes and bananas are some of his favourites. However, it was a little too much when he ate the only corn that actually had a cob, and tried to chew through one of my lock and lock containers to get into the crackers I had stored inside. At dawn and dusk he comes into the kitchen and sees what he can eat, even when we are in the house. He is loosing his fear of people and becoming quite fat and sleek looking.

 

           NOTICE: There is a very nice, plump, South American Squirrel for sale.

                                                  Very low price. In fact I will give him to you.... 

The neighbours said eat him. Squirrels taste like rabbit they said. Hmmmmm.....

Squirrel cache

We are hoping to not have to kill Mr Squirrel, nor give him to our neighbours for supper, so we have put all the food he likes into containers and bamboo baskets and then put it into a hammock strung up on the clothes line inside the house. Hopefully in time he will give up looking for food, and when there are windows that he will stay out and not learn to chew through the screens.  

      So this is the highlights of this last month. Oh, and the other highlight was the brownies Steven made me for my birthday! He he! Such food doesn't appear around this house very often, so one must enjoy it to the fullest when it does!
       P.S. Here is a picture of a monkey we took when a troop of monkeys moving through the back yard interrupted breakfast.

     

The New Wilson Home!

Well, construction on our house continues! As of Feb 26, we have been living in our house unfinished as it is! It is really nice to finally have our own little space and I am glad to have my own little kitchen. Little by little we have been working on improvements and it is getting more and more comfortable all the time. Here are a few glimpses of life here as it has been progressing.

When we first moved in we didn't have counters, sink, table, or anything like that, 

so we made do with what we had.

Mike, a volunteer who put in the two outside door frames,
seated at the lunch table.

The outside doors

Strange noises in the night have been waking Steven up and causing
him to go on patrol. There in the corner of the tool bag you can
see the culprit. We have evicted Mr Toad and two of his cousins so
far, but I don't know how many more of his relatives we are going to
meet in the other room!  

And as work continued, Steven made me kitchen counters and a sink...

 

My kitchen window sill. I have been taking after my Mom! She always
had so many plants in the windowsill in the springtime that you
could never see out of them! My plants keep migrating to the garden as they grow.

Fresh bread using the pans Steven's Mom gave us : ) and the table cloth that
was also given to us as a wedding present.

So here is the view of my kitchen as it is at present.

We have been very much enjoying our new hand crank blender!
It works much better than I thought it would! Especially with Steven
behind the handle!

Our new dining room...

The freshly washed bedding hanging up on the indoor clothesline.

Our bedroom. The mosquito net hangs up over the bed at night.
There are swarms of mosquitoes right now! It has been raining more
lately and the blood thirsty insects are on the rampage!

Our clothes closet... a piece of rebar hung from the roof and covered with a cloth.

      And since the septic tank is not anything more than a hole in the ground,

     our shower is outside under the tap. But in spite of that, it is quite nice.

The inside view of the shower. We have since moved it a little ways from the house so
that the view from the window over the sink is not into the shower. 

This is where the shower was situated.

Even our outhouse has been improved! The seat still needs a little stabilizing so you
don't get a rush as you feel you are about to tip into the hole, but it works great.
There are so many mosquitoes that you aren't there long with so
 much skin exposed anyways!

Here are a few pictures of our little garden. I am working on it bit by bit all the time, but there is so much to do all at once that I have not really finished much. However the zucchini are growing fast, and so are the pumpkin. The corn is trying to grow, and the lettuce is trying to recover from the shock of transplanting.

The corn patch. The ants did a number on the corn as it was just coming out
of the ground, and then because we didn't till the soil for the first seeds we
planted, the first corn has been struggling. 

In preparation for the second batch of corn, I tilled the soil and added all the
leaves and branches into the trench, thinking that it would slowly give
nutrients as the corn grew. The corn came up really well, but then in one area
all the corn was chopped off under the ground. It wasn't ants so I dug into the soil to
see what had done it. Termites. The termites were eating all the branches I had dug
down into the soil and were also eating the roots of the plants while they were at it.
I figured out that a separate compost pile for the branches and woody things is
the best idea. When the termites have reduced the wood to nice soil, then
put it on the garden for the plants to enjoy. 

The little zucchini plants

I had basil started in the window, and one day a hungry grasshopper
came by and ate off four of them. So now I have them covered to
save them from the grasshoppers and other hungry insects.

Little passion fruit plants. They will be climbing up on a tree that is in the front yard.

 And so the story of living in Bolivia continues. God has been so good to us. Every time we run out and I get discouraged about how we are ever going to be able to finish the house and have enough for food as well, God always provides something somehow. Work goes forward, and I hope that we can make a difference.

Continuing Construction on our House

So, we have been building on our house, and now you can see the progress too!

The rafters up on one side of the house

Getting geared up to put on the rafters

There is our little house with most of the metal up!!!

Steven

Digging the outhouse hole. We don't have the septic tank  yet, beyond a hole in the ground, and so
the first bathroom will be an outhouse behind the garden. You can sit there and watch the corn grow if
that is what would suit your fancy. The mosquitoes may not leave you in peace long though!

Steven on the throne over the septic tank hole. While we were gone to Yaquiba to get my visa,
some other missionaries became convinced that our septic tank wasn't big enough, so they talked the
backhoe operator into helping us out and digging the hole deeper. Now it is big enough to bury half a
dozen cows! It has proven useful since we are putting all the construction garbage in the bottom, and
then will fill in over it and on top build the septic tank.

Putting on the perlins

A neat caterpillar Scott found and showed us

Little helpers! They helped smooth off the floor, removing the fallen mortar from the
floor surface.

There is the roofing going on! It is a concrete fibre board called Duralit. 

A modufactured wrench.... an exhaust pipe from off of one of the air planes.
A little more torque was needed, and so you make do with what you have!

The extra torque in action!

Some friends gave us the start of a new kitchen: a stove and a gas tank!!!!

CERENID, a street boys home out in the mountains of Bolivia.  A friend of ours, and student of the
Matteson Mission School, is volanteering for a time here, so we went out and spent a Sabbath
there with the boys and friends.

The bus stop leaving CERENID

Water ditches!!! Now for the water pipe.

The view from the front of the house. There is a big pile of dirt and a big tree with
vines hanging from the high branches. The kids love to swing on from the
 top of the pile on the vines.

Steven in front of our house. It looks so much more homey with the laundry drying there.
Hopefully in just a little while we will be living here! 

A very fuzzy caterpillar we found in the house.

       And so besides a trip to Argentina for visa purposes, and a few days running around in town due to paperwork for my one year residency, we have been working mostly on our house. We are very eager to be living there where there will be peace and just Steven and myself. I am very grateful to the family who have let us stay with them, but they need their space and we need ours. God willing we will be in our house within a week. We only lack water and a plumbed sink before we want to move in. All in good time. God is always in the business of  teaching patience, and I am always slow to learn to be patient with a smile.

     I didn't put up any pictures of the garden because it looks very sad. The ants and the hard sand has been causing the corn to struggle. I have tried some more, but this time tilling the soil and adding compost, so I hope that it will do better now. Little by little we will be working on it, and when it is worth looking at, I will post pictures.