Holiday Work

Just when you think the work maybe will end or at least decrease a little, we begin new projects. First, we are helping the primary school in Amatongas build new classrooms. This will help benefit our school as well since the primary school is presently using some of our classrooms during the day.

Director of the primary school (left) and supervisor of work

Four new classrooms are being added

Also, we are adding 12th grade in 2014 and we needed to find a few new classrooms ourselves. So, we are renovating the Parish Youth Center into two classrooms, 11th and 12th grades. The building will still be used by the parish on the weekends, but during the week it will be used by the school.

A new ceiling is being installed to help reduce heat, as well as new windows, black boards, lighting and a new door and entryway for the 12th grade.

Carpenters install new ceiling

And finally, the corn update you have all been waiting for. Well, you may not have been waiting for it, but you get it anyway since it's a major preoccupation for me, the brothers, the students, and pretty much everyone living in Amatongas and probably Mozambique. Of course, corn is the main staple of the diet here and in most of Africa.

Below is the 5 hectares of corn we planted just a few weeks ago. Thanks to good rain this new field will most likely be our best and should produce a minimum of 30,000 kilos and hopefully closer to 40,000.

You just gotta love those straight lines produced by our new planter

 Meanwhile our other two fields are looking much better after the rains last week. It seems like they grew a foot or two overnight.

Some students and our parish youth group helping to clean the corn fields

 And when you finally see the corn fields begin to flower, it's a beautiful sight.

The 1st field we planted begins to flower