Here are some updates from the Pendjari Project:

On a recent trip to Cotonou, we got a generator for our printing press.

Our mason finished the water tower for the garden, and we got the tanks up and piped.

The plumber has been here a lot trying to get all the pumps in and working. We now have four pumps—one electric/solar panel and one run by generator in each well.

We found a house for Pricilla and started to move some of the stuff in. Then last Tuesday we found that the house had been robbed. The stuff stolen included my plug-in cooler and the gas bottle, toaster and all the smaller plastic and kitchen stuff that Pricilla bought to use. Thankfully the mattress was still there, lying outside on the porch as if they wanted to take it but hadn’t come back yet. So we went to the police, which took a while. They came and looked around and asked us to list the missing things. We took out our new locks and put in the old ones, and the owner gave us back the advance. Thankfully we didn’t have the other stuff in there yet. We packed everything up and hauled it back to our house. So we are back to looking for a house in a different part of town.

The garden is going okay. We had low-water-pressure issues last week, but the plumber came and fixed it.

Almost every day the guys take the veggies they collect into town to sell. Green peppers are the best sellers. We can get 14 to 20 dollars in one day just for those.

We hired Fidel’s cousin, who is an accountant, to help keep the books.

The printing press should be ready to go soon, now that the generator works. When the tech was here we hauled the big printer to a friend’s house with electricity to test it and make sure it worked.

It is mango season, and I made a batch of mango jam. Very yummy.

Pricilla is moving slowly forward on her French. I have her correcting the Pathfinder book Happy Path in French, as we only have an OLD typewritten copy that has been copied a million times, and the mission would like it in digital format. I OCRed it, and now it needs to be fixed. This reminds me of when I was an SM in Mongolia and got the job of going through the typed version of the Bible in Cyrilic and comparing it with the handwritten version to make sure it had been typed correctly.

Suzy Baldwin-Noutehou

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