Hi, all,

We shared some ice cream and cake with the Vanga folk over evening prayers for my birthday this Sunday.

I'm a little discouraged and at loose ends.In the first place, there is the communication problem, trying to get used to this radio system and our very limited power right now, after being in the States and all the promises we made about staying in touch.We cannot make e-mail contact every day and don't always get all the incoming messages in the queue, or outgoing messages out when we do.Our solar panels should arrive beginning of next month and make a real difference.Right now I don't feel like I can work very much, since each time I'm on the computer during the day it takes so much of our available power, on which the first priority is message transmission.Literacy work, research, contacts with the other missionaries to put together projects, and collaborative work with Congolese colleagues are all on hold.

Secondly, the most urgent task I had, coming back, was to get a program and funding proposal written for the literacy-family education collaboration for 2006 for SANRU (the ecumenical Protestant rural public health assistance program, funded largely by USAID).We were to turn it in by the end of August.

It was very difficult here to get the background information needed to do a credible job, and there were many delays, but I finally got it done, and was starting to get excited about the possibilities it represented to reinforce work we and SANRU had already done, and extend naturally into new geographical areas, some of which had asked for help with literacy in the past.Bill Clemmer said it was a very good proposal.Then USAID informed him that they are completely dropping the family planning program next year that our program works with, and in which so much energy has been invested....And you wonder why people are reluctant... So the proposal goes into a file and we turn our attention to other possibilities and needs.And yet, it made a difference and expectations have been raised.Now I'm waiting on Rose Mayala to give me dates for the river trip we're planning for end of this month or beginning of October to Bolobo for training volunteer adult literacy teachers, so that we can put it all in motion.

I'm told that people there are looking forward to our coming. I have imperious demands for literacy work to be started in Molembe, Lute and Bulungu, in this area, but don't have a way to respond as yet.The proposal just shelved was to address these needs.I just wrote my colleague, Lynn Nelson, who may have a solution in hand to the needs for literacy follow-up in the Kikongo area, though.

Thirdly, for the first time in my memory, the rains are more or less a month late, and atmospherically, dry season still has us in its strong grip.We came enthusiastic, pruning and weeding, planting seeds for the next step.We're on severe water rationing, but the vegetable seedlings we started needed transplanting, and I don't dare plant a second round in the dry season garden down by the Mosangu creek.We've been expecting the rains to really start any day, so we've planted most of our vegetable garden behind the house, depending on two barrel's worth of water carried from the Mosangu every day.I planted out, and we're watering the flower bulbs and plants I brought, since they'd waited a long time, and I'm watering the mulberry bushes fairly regularly, since they're fruiting, but everything else is on hold till the rains.I guess it's just as well that some of my flower seedlings damped off, since I don't dare dig their bed and plant them out until rains are established.Even my pineapple plants have been limp and wilted since we got here! Their soil's turned to powder, but I haven't dared water them.The guava trees have been fruiting, it being the season, but the fruit hasn't filled out for lack of water. No one's selling any fruit but lemons to us, and my one papaya tree is being sucked dry by an ant's nest under it.I've located some young plants to replace it with, but cannot transplant them till we have enough water.One of our passionfruit vines may not survive the severe pruning it got followed by continued drought.

So we're on hold, waiting and praying. Many planted their peanuts after a good rain that came at the right time and seemed to herald the beginning of the rainy season, and the plants came up, but the promise hasn't been fulfilled.We've had two light rains widely spread apart since then, only enough to keep the peanuts from drying up yet.The mushrooms people depend on during this time of year haven't come up.Crop failure could mean severe malnutrition, even starvation, in the whole area two and three months from now.

Without the more important things to do right now, I'm sewing:my working wardrobe is a little too small.

Blessings!

Miriam