Last week, we dug a trench for the clinic to drain all the water from the sink down to the stream area more than 300 feet away. Bob Wright, the head of the construction/all-around handyman team, wanted to stop the kids from playing underneath the sink in the dirty water, the dogs from drinking the water and just to stop the muddy mess around where people walked. Rebekah, Hannah and I were the only ones digging for 6 days. We woke up every morning stiff and sore, ready to go back to work for another 8 hours.
The clinic is next to a small village called Moru Grace. Moru means “mountain,” and Leah (one of the Missionary Associates here) says that there used to be an old woman living in the mountain named Grace, so they basically called the village Grace’s mountain. Some kids and adults from the village and around the area would come and watch us while we dug, commenting in limited English on how hard the work was and asking if we were tired -- a question with an obvious answer, but they were trying to make conversation. :)
To ensure the piping we put in later would not be crushed by vehicles and/or people driving and walking over it, we dug the entire trench two feet deep and deeper in some places. The goal was to start out at two feet and gradually slope down so that the water would run down the pipes toward the stream behind the clinic fence. We measured this by pouring water in the trench every once in a while to check if it was going downhill. This worked while we had no pipes in the trench, but because of the unevenness of the trench at the bottom, the pipe did not necessarily lie flat the whole length of the trench… SO the water may pool in some areas of the pipe, but Bob said we don’t have to worry about it leaking because the dirt around the pipes will act as a glue once it is fully packed in around the pipes and eventually the water will build up and run out the end of the pipe into the stream. We are hoping this is the case. It was a long, hard week of work.
While we were digging one day – I believe it was the fourth or fifth day, the day we had to hack through a network of thorns to continue the trench on the other side of the clinic fence – I was thinking about the thorns that are all over Africa. They are a result of the curse, which are a result of Adam and Eve’s sin. They wouldn’t have been there if sin had not entered into the world. We would not have had to deal with them. I was stuck with thorns several times as Bekah and I were hacking through them, trying to clear the ground for our shovels, and I thought of the crown of thorns Jesus wore when he died for me on the cross… the crown of thorns that was jabbed so brutally into his skull, piercing skin and drawing blood. Huge thorns, like these I cut through with my machete – thorns that were a result of our sin. A curse that came upon the world when that first sin was committed and the first blood of an innocent lamb was shed to cover Adam and Eve’s shameful nakedness – a curse that has stayed ever since -- was jabbed into my Savior’s head thousands of years later, shedding the blood of the true innocent Lamb to cover our shameful nakedness and clothe us with his righteousness so that we could stand before his father, unashamed. What a wonderful Savior we have…
Our next project is to fill the potholes and deep groves in the dirt in front of the Wright’s workshop with stones we are hauling down from the site where we will be building a new clinic. The leftover rocks will be used to mix with cement to make concrete for the floors and ceiling.
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