Haiti Kids Club, Solar Power Zambia

 
Kids Clubs continue strong in Haiti.

These are a few photos from June at Fauche.

The mission promotes health for the whole person and all ages: Church, hospital, school, Compassion International's Child Survival Program, Kids Club....

 I (Cory) doubt American kids would get excited about a popcorn snack and toothpaste to bring home, But the Haitian kids appreciate it.

At Delice the local corn and bean gardens are growing well and a good harvest is much needed for Haiti.

Please also pray for God's protection for the Delice property and workers.

The severe drought is hitting Zambian hydroelectric hard, which supplies (supplied) about 85% of the countries electricity.

The electric schedule lately is 12 hours off, 6 hours on, fairly regular but still occasionally random.

The good rains of December seem a long way off.

As hours of power per day continues to dwindle and our refrigerator and freezer struggle to stay cold (with the nearest supermarket an hour away), we decided to get some solar.

Prices are up with the high demand but not as bad for us using our strong USA dollars.

This is Cory's 3rd place installing solar where we live and only has two 450W panels.

It is probably more than we need and if so we could share like we did in Haiti.

Since Zambia's hydroelectric is significantly lower cost compared to USA electric, solar isn't as competitive when the utility has electric.

So we hope is is mainly just for this year and skimped on the batteries, figuring we will use most of the power during the day.

Recently we had no water in our house for about 10 days although the single guys dorm next door had good water flow during the 2 or 3 hours per day that the well can provide (bad combination of fewer hours of electric and lowering water table).

The maintenance man started digging various places along the water line to find the problem and found several places roots were squeezing the pipe.

Looks like a mango tree growing next to our line was the culprit, squeezing the line flat, although several spots were worked on.

Still only brief water in the house or none some days but we look forward to a new borehole which is planned and the solar pump addition to the existing well which should arrive at any time.