Pray for Guinea!
Please pray for Guinea today! They should be having elections today. This could be a real turning point for Guinea. Please pray it goes well and that everything stays peaceful! I am so excited to see what God’s plan is for Guinea! We will try to keep you updated.
Happy Father’s Day!
Happy Father’s Day to the most incredible father in the entire universe! We love you so much!
Canaan Joshua, March 19, 2006
Charles Emmaus, November 25, 2008
God has truly blessed us beyond measure! We could never survive without you! You are always leading us to the Lord and always taking incredible care of us. You are our best friend, our hero, our shoulder to lean on and so much more. Thank you for always being so selfless and sacrificial for us and for God. We love you!
Love,
Debra, Canaan and Emmaus
P. S! Happy Father’s Day to our incredible Dads! Lee and Charlie, we love you so much and are so blessed to have you as our Dads. We would not be the people we are today without you. Thank you so much for your years of sacrifice and love!
Haircuts!
All three boys needed haircuts! So this morning I decided to finally try my 110V buzzers on our transformer. Most American items take 110 volts but also 60 hertz. Here in Senegal the power is 220 volts and 50 hertz. We have voltage stabilizers in most of our rooms, which protect whatever is plugged in from power surges (this happens MANY times a day). The stabilizers also transform the power from 220 volts to 110 volts. But it does not change the hertz. This can result in ruining whatever you plugged in, but most things can still run on 50 hertz. They will usually burn out sooner than if it was running on 60 hertz, but they should still work.
So today I finally decided to try out the buzzers. I was afraid that it would work at first until was half way done with a hair cut and die on me… I decide to go ahead… its not may hair!! Haha! I did Canaan first, since he is more wiggily and would be best for me to get his hair buzzed, Norm can sit through a long laborious scissor cut! I am so slow and not very good at scissor cuts. I quickly cut Canaans hair and had no problems. Then I sat Norm down and it wouldn’t turn on! Oh no! Haha… it had fallen out of the plug. I get about 1/3 of the way done with Norm and it shuts off… uh oh! Haha… unplugged again! =) Thank you LORD!!
Then Emmaus woke up from his nap. He has thin thin baby hair! Canaan and Norm have thick coarse hair… they do really well with buzz cuts. If I buzzed Emmaus’ hair…. well… I don’t think it would really be possible… I sat him down and snipped away. He sat there pretty well. The cut didn’t come out amazing… but not too too bad. At least his hair isn’t hanging over his ears anymore!
As for me… I have yet to hear of anyone who does cuts here in Dakar… (White people hair I mean… ) I know they are out there… I just have to find one. That will be a whole other post! =)
Before:
After:
The shipment is here!
Back in September, when we were in Guinea, we had a nasty bout of malaria. Canaan, Emmaus and Debra… all down and out with it. It was a tough and trying time. We had only been in Guinea for 5 weeks and didn’t feel very settled yet. After that, we talked a lot with our family and decided to have a shipment sent over to us with some much need items and mostly with some familiar and some easy to cook foods. Stuff like cereal, hamburger helper, chips, canned chicken and beef. And also, Christmas presents, toilet paper holder, duct tape… the list goes on. We decided that a nice shipment would be a good idea, since the elections and the political status of Guinea was a little unsure. We thought having some good non perishable foods would be good to have stock piled incase of house arrest. Little did we know that shortly there after, Guinea would fall apart and be very unstable politically. We ended up having to stay at home for 6 weeks. My family and church got that shipment together and sent off in record time. They sent it by truck to Missouri where the Christian Shipping company (Friends in Action) is located. Once it got there it was prepared to be sent to North Carolina to then be put on a boat and sent to us via a mining company that works in Guinea. The day before it left Missouri we finally came to the conclusion that we all had to leave Conakry. We called Friends in Action and asked them if they would be willing to hold onto the shipment (16 boxes) until we knew for sure what was going to be happening with us. After months of prayer and decisions…. we decided to move up to Dakar, Senegal. Just before we left for Dakar we asked Friends in Action to send it up to Dakar. Its a lot more expensive to send things to Dakar, because we don’t have a nice deal with any mining companies… Oh well! We really felt that God knew what was going to happen to us before we did and he still allowed our family and church to prepare the shipment for us. So we went ahead and had it sent here.
Its finally here!! After 9 months its finally with us. Its pretty funny looking at some of the expiration dates on all the food… Most of it so far has been great still… Some of the chips have lost their crispiness… but other than that, everything seems pretty good. We had lots of pepperoni in there too. It all looks great still! Praise Jesus! There was also a bar of Velveta cheese (it was supposed to be an experiment to see if it would last the trip) Well after 9 months its still great! There was also a Boboli pizza crust… It expired last October. It tasted great! Haha!
Here are some pics of it coming, being opened, carried up to the fourth floor and enjoyed! There was stuff in there for two other families. But the majority in the big crate was ours. (at least 60%)
THANK YOU EVERYONE! YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!
Hundreds of screws removed by hand!
8 month expired! Still good!
Enjoying some new toys!
The old TP holder!
The new TP holder!!
Organizing!!!
Check out the rest of the pics at flickr.com/n0rm_debra.
Happy 28th Birthday Daddy!!!
Happy birthday Norman! We love you so much. You are our hero. You rescue us each and everyday and you take incredible care of us. None of us could ask for better. You are an incredible father, husband, son, friend and best of all follower of God! Thank you for being the leader and being the strength of the family. You are simply incredible. If anyone knew of the amazing things you do for us each day…
Emmaus is one and a half years old!
Can he really be 18 months already? How time flies! He truly is little monkey. He loves to entertain and make silly faces. I just realized the day of that it was his half birthday. We had celebrated it when Canaan turned 1 1/2 so I thought we ought to do it with Emmaus too! Check our Canaan’s 1 1/2 birthday post HERE.
We were not able to celebrate as much this time, but I did make some apple muffins and an “classic American” meal!
As always, check out the rest of the pics on our Flickr page!
Furniture!
Here is my new living room set! I am so excited about it! Kathleen and I went and bought the fabric for these a year ago! I am so happy to finally have it done! I also have some really nice green fabric to cover some small throw pillows to put on the couches. I can’t wait to see it all put together!
I didn’t have enough fabric to cover all the cushions for all the pieces to the set. But we were already planning on putting the love seat into another room. So here is what I bought at the market for the love seat!
We bought the set last Saturday. Then on Sunday we took him the fabric to cover the cushions. Normally they come pre-covered, but I really wanted to use my own, so that it would truly reflect my style, instead of just putting up with something that I didn’t really like. The arrived here at the apartment yesterday evening. I was so thrilled to see how it turned out!!
I went “shopping” on the Pottery Barn website a few weeks ago, looking for an entertainment center. I wanted something that would have doors, so that it would protect the TV from dust, but mostly keep it from glaring at everyone when they came for a visit. Its very important that we don’t flaunt things that are a bit expensive. For one we don’t want to be robbed and two we want to be sensitive to those around us. Here is what I found:
I adjusted the dimensions to fit our needs, a little thinner and a little narrower. Norm went down the other day to check out the progress. What do you think?
The carpenter came to visit us yesterday and said that it should be done tomorrow, but then he needs to stain it. So he said he hopes to get it to us on Tuesday. I am so excited! It will be nice to get the tv off of the Action Packer (plastic tub)!
I will post pictures as soon as we get it in. We have already talked to him about making us a coffee table. We really need one because when our neighbors come to eat with us, we eat at the coffee table. They don’t have a dinner table and it would be so foreign to them to eat at a table. We all eat out of the same dish, so it would be pretty tough eating together at the table.
I also bought some stuff from a dorm that is closing down. I can’t wait until June 5th to see what it looks like. I bought a shelf, a 2 1/2 foot long counter for in the hallway (kitchen… hahaha) and a microwave shelf. I don’t have a microwave, but its possible I might get one in the future. Plus it has lots of good, much needed storage. Pics to come, of course!
Food!
I thought I would post a couple pictures of a few things food related. Up until now, we have been fed entirely by our host family. Its been nice… but we are also anxious to eat some things that are familiar. Today we went to the market and bought a few things. We are paying a lady to cook lunch for us 4 times a week, on class days. She will be cooking local food for us. So I needed to buy things needed for making Senegalese food and also some of our recipes. Here are some pics I took today of different food items.
Here are some of veggies we bought today. I have to soak them for 20 minutes in bleach water. If we don’t do this, we can get quite sick. This helps our systems to function well here, its soak the veggies or spend hours a day on the toilet! Hehe!
Orange Fanta. Its super easy to get here and its always nice to have some cold refreshing drinks in the fridge. I love all the random English written all over everything.
This is Iced Tea. I make it almost every night. I make it in these 1.5 liter water bottles. They store well in the fridge and don’t leak. All of my pitchers that I brought are too big for our apartment size fridge that we currently have.
This is a juice concentrate that I use to make juice for the kids. Its readily available here and super easy to make. Just mix 1 part juice and 9 parts water and mix! But I usually make it a lot more diluted. I usually dilute the kids juice anyway, might as well make it that way.
The number one most used food in Senegal is: RICE! If they don’t eat rice, they don’t feel like they have eaten. This is the small bag…
This is some mixture that they use in A LOT of their meals here. I am not really sure what is in it, but I know they use lime and salt and oil and other random things. I kind of think its like the go to liquid to put in all of their meals. As you can see… pretty much everything is stored in water bottles.
Palm oil. Very important and used in many meals. Most of the sauces are extremely high in oil.
Vinegar. So far, in the markets all you can find is vinegar with alcohol. In Guinea I never found white vinegar with no alcohol. I am hoping to have better luck here.
Jumbo cubes. Bouillon of some sort!
Peanut butter, locally made. Its more like natural peanut butter and much more watery. This is used in the sauces. Peanut sauce is one of my favourite African meals.
Fishy! Fishy!! Oh ya… it still looks like this when the meal is ready to eat. Gotta love fish head… yuck! 
Gas bottle for running the stove/oven.
We found a somewhat nice place that is about a 15 min walk from our place. Its called La Brioche Dorée. They have croissants, bread, danishes and some other fast food type items. They have Senegalese style (Lebanese) hamburgers, chwaramas (sort of like a gyro…) and pizza. Most of the pizza options are not that great… but maybe in the future we can take some find some pepperoni and take it in and have them make us something special!
Anyway, hopefully in a few months I can write this post with more knowledge of things available and what things are used for. I hope you are enjoying some little tid bits from our lives here in Senegal!
Senegalese Garbage System!
Praise Jesus they have a garbage system here in Dakar! Every morning we hear the blaring horn of the garbage truck going around the neighborhood. When it gets near our apartment it honks its horns for at least 60 seconds. It sounds more like a big truck horn… its very loud. You definitely can’t miss it. Once it comes everyone starts scurrying around getting their garbage ready. Then everyone heads out and lines up. Its pretty neat that it comes everyday!
Senegalese Utilities!
This is my washing machine! Luckily we pay someone to wash our clothes for us. This would take me a few hours day! We are hoping to either buy a new washing machine or get ours from Guinea shipped up! We shall see.
Senegalese dryers (roof tops).
We plug everything into these voltage regulators, there are often spikes in the electricity, these protect the things that are plugged into it. We have one in every room.
This is the UPS. It is a voltage regulator and a battery back-up. If the power were to dip for even a second the computer would immediately shut off. This gives us a few minutes to save everything and shut down.
Our water turns off multiple times a day, sometimes for a few hours a day.
This is our water storage for dishes, bathing, toilets, and everything else while the water is off.
I hate having my hands all dirty only to find out there is no water. I have started keeping water next to the sinks for hand washing. This is the kitchen sink. I have a big pitcher here for washing hands or rinsing dishes, I have been in the middle of washing something when the water went out. Thus stuck with a clean but soapy dish.
This is the bathroom sink. We have a few options, hand sanitizer, which I really don’t like using but Canaan loves it. Then their is also a little a liter of water ready for use! Â I make sure to keep them filled all the time. It gets used everyday! Its doing little things like this that make life seem normal here. If we were constantly stuck with dirty hands hunting down some water (never at a good moment) it gets frustrating. But finding little things to make like go smoothly are such life savers.
This is our water filter. We have to make sure we keep as much water going in as there is coming out! We put the water in the top bucket and it goes through 3 ceramic filters. This makes our water safe to drink.
This is my fruit stand. I took this picture from our balcony. We go here to buy apples, bananas, mangoes, oranges and also little crackers that the kids eat regularly. You can also buy lollipops, soap, travel size tissues, matches and some other random things like that.
You can also see the pharmacy that we go to and right behind the stand is the woodworker we have started using!
Hope you enjoyed seeing a few things from our daily life! Thanks for checking in.
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