Tad's Life

Last night we were at Dakar Academy for the junior class’s movie night. We ate burgers and fries and later watched “Shaggy Dog” under the stars with a couple hundred folks.

When I had arrived at 6, Jane was still in the staff lounge working on grading quizzes with her cohort in teaching, Debbie Kneivel. In fact, I stood in line to pay for the food while they kept working. Then I got them out of the air conditioning and we got our food. Believe it or not, Jane then went back in and continued working. She was hoping to be free the rest of the weekend and figured missing a Disney flick was worth it! Though Tim Allen’s physical comedy was hilarious, she certainly didn’t miss anything deep or though-provoking.

I also found on the camera this shot of Gretchen and the cat from Wednesday. Gretchen came over that day, as I noted. The cat was in such a loving mood that she was up on Gretchen’s lap in no time and purring very loudly at the least attention! I like our cat.

// posted by Tad @ 9:09 AM 0 comments

Sorry, Anna. I haven't blogged for a few days, but I have a good excuse!

We had two very nice days away at Aldiana, the German resort south of Mbour. We did very little. That was heavenly. Naps in an air conditioned room. Sitting by the pool reading magazines. Lazing in the pool itself when the sun wasn't so hot. Eating large quantities of too rich food. We didn't even have to drive down. The school rented an air conditioned bus! What luxury.

But the last day, Jane wasn't well. And as we got back, I started feeling unwell, too. In the end, Jonathan and I crashed early and slept until 10 on Monday. Jane was better and headed to school. I half recovered and worked a bit that day. Tuesday, though, I never left bed. Yesterday I slogged my way through, working more rationally as the day went by. By the evening I even was able to cook supper and have a good conversation with Gretchen who came for the evening.

I'll try to post something with photos later today!

// posted by Tad @ 6:18 AM 0 comments

I'm awake.

Fortunately, Jane and I are going with the Dakar Academy staff tomorrow (er, today) for a couple days of R&R at Aldiana. I'll sleep then. Jonathan will be at the McComb dorm with JJ and the Mulay boys, watched over by the Fincks. The boys will have a blast. I don't know how Vern and Jan will hold up!

On the Phare blog site you can see my electrical handiwork. These power outages are getting nutty. We've looked into a generator big enough for the Phare. I hope it happens!

We cancelled our long range planning committee meeting this afternoon. Vern was ill. The others were up to their elbows in boxes of stuff. The DA container finally came!! It didn’t impact Jane much, but many teachers had been waiting since the beginning of school for textbooks or special supplies. This is a common experience at DA, but every year the new set of folks involved swears that they have figured out how to get the shipment here in early August. Rarely do they succeed!

At that meeting we cancelled, we were going to talk about things like how big DA might actually get to be. I thought you might like to see the data from the last few years.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the elementary grades have leveled off after the influx from Abidjan in 04-05. And so has the middle school. The high school grades continue to grow, even though the big jump was when ICA came up in 02-03. Clear to you what will happen in the next 10 years? No. Nor to me!

// posted by Tad @ 1:21 AM 1 comments

Middle School is tough. Well, not tough like it is hard to understand. Middle School requires a young man to do a lot more work than he was used to doing in 5^th grade! Today that meant going over “verbs” and “subjects” with Mom at the dining room table. Jonathan’s English teacher and his mother fortunately are not the same person! But unfortunately, they team teach the 8^th grade and work together a lot. Word got back that he didn’t really seem to have his grammar basics down pat like he needed to. He claimed it was because he was sick that day. Today he had to prove it to Mom.

What he’d rather have been doing, of course, was sitting at the PS/2 playing a game where he is a soldier in World War II fighting in North Africa. Shortly after the Mom quiz, having proved his grammar skills, he took on that military challenge. He now informs me that he has made it to Sicily.

So what do you do with that? Do you steer your child away from his boyish attraction to violence? Do you limit games to non-human violence? I hate parenting decisions like this.

But the most sobering thought of the week, the one that keeps haunting me, is that Jonathan will actually be soldiering age in only 7 years. Looking at the world scene, seeing the irreconcilable clash of visions between jihadist Islam and modern civilization, I don’t expect peace in my life time. And that means my son will grow up at a time when joining the military may seem to him the right thing to do. Several of our friends here have sons currently serving in Iraq, having chosen and sought to go, one for the second time. I work a lot with one of their moms, an old friend of ours. Jane is in a Bible study with the other. The thought that struck like a blow was that this could be our reality in just a few years.

There is nothing I can do, of course, to avoid this possibility. I want my son to act with honor and integrity and do what he believes is right. I want him to care. I wouldn’t want him to refuse to risk his life out of fear of death. Of course, I also wouldn’t want him to risk his life because his head was filled with foolish unrealities. May we have the wisdom to raise a boy into a man before it is time for him to decide such things!

// posted by Tad @ 8:27 PM 1 comments

I went to church in Ouakam alone. Jonathan spent last night with Carlin at the middle school boys’ dorm. Jane was “xawa febaar”, a little sick. Headache and queasiness and general fatigue. So I grabbed the bag of 50 new songbooks and headed over.

Part way into the service, my niece Gretchen came in. She lives right around the corner from the new church building. After the service she came with me and we headed over to the other side of town to get Jonathan. Then we headed back to the house. She ended up staying for lunch that Jane made in a better period. Jonathan and I dropped her off at her apartment around 3:30 on our way back to DA. I played basketball. Jonathan (after finishing the last bit of homework) slipped over to Corrie’s house again to play.

Gretchen’s visit was wonderful, as always. She had really enjoyed the copy of Invention and Technology that I loaned her, so she took several more copies. We also swapped cell phones. Both are really hers, but the one we had ended up with has a cool spelling feature that she wanted. Gretchen told us about her work teaching English to rich African kids. They are college students, but only half of them seem to really be serious about learning, she thinks. Jane and she swapped stories of teaching. Mostly we just talked a bunch. And laughed. And generally enjoyed each other.

It was a day filled with the little things of life. I had the privilege of delivering Ouakam’s share of the new song books, the fruition of over ten years of effort by a number of folks. But it wasn’t a big ceremony. It’s too low key of a group for that. When the big Evangelical Church of Dakar gets its 300 copies next week, I’m sure there will be a bigger to-do. Basketball was fine. I didn’t hurt myself. Well, my ego took a bruising, as usual. My passing was atrocious today! The gas bottle ran out and when I tried to buy another in the neighborhood, I was told that there is a shortage at the moment. We watched an Andy Griffith episode, Jonathan, Jane and I. You know, a normal, uneventful day. Very nice.

// posted by Tad @ 8:47 PM 1 comments

Saturday morning at the Hamptons this week is fairly calm. Jonathan is over at Corrie’s house. The Timberlakes just got back this week from summer in the US, so the buddies are reuniting. We thought that they were going to spend the night here, but, at the last minute, the plan changed. So Jane and I had a relaxed evening with just the two of us. We actually watched a movie (mediocre, but without many interruptions). Then this morning we slept in and started the day at a reasonable pace.

Juliette works for us on Saturdays. Today she brought her daughter, Adja. So we have the joy of this cutie in the house. She walked around with me while I took photos of the happenings at the Phare today.

By that point Jane was out doing first aid on a talibé. Also, a church group (the main Baptist group in Dakar) was starting to gather. A little later, Alex stopped by to pick up a pastor and his friend from PA who came in last night. They are here to visit MIS. I met them and changed money for them (since it is Saturday and the banks are closed). Jane by now was on the couch working on grading vocabulary quizzes.

Meanwhile, the phone keeps ringing. Antoinette has been at the hospital with her sister for days. They have finally decided that she has septicemia, a system-wide infection started by a deep abscess in her hip that also infected her brain. This explains the bizarre combination of symptoms: hip pain, coughing blood, stroke-like loss of one side of her body strength. And it will mean surgery and a lengthy hospital stay and even then, in our judgment, her life is in significant danger.

This is very serious, but the delays in treatment are tragic. Yesterday the government hospital that finally made this diagnosis tried to transfer her to a private hospital for treatment, actually sending her in an ambulance across town, only to be told there were no beds available. That is what happened 10 days ago when the Mbour hospital sent her up here to Dakar, only for the family to find out there was no room in the government hospital. They had to wait days, with the sick lady staying with Antoinette’s family, until a bed opened up.

And, of course, the family is at the end of its resources. That was the Saturday morning question. Probably the Lord let it come early on while I was relaxed and mellow. But this lady won’t be able to afford treatment unless we step in and participate financially. And we have no idea how much it will come to. Normally that would raise my stress levels significantly. Today it just feels like the only right choice. (Thank you, Lord.)

// posted by Tad @ 10:38 AM 1 comments

Well, it's Monday morning. Each Monday I head over to DA with Jane and the kids (Jonathan and two of our neighbors). They go to school. I go to participate in a weekly prayer meeting with the Director and Board Exec Committee. While I was there today, I thought I'd take a couple shots of the construction under way right now. (Gee, is there anything else in my life at the moment?)

We're redoing the walls on both sides of the DA property and eventually along the main road, too. Monsieur Thiam has started with his crew on the alley side, the right or north wall. They have torn down the wall all the way back past the elementary building. There is a zinc construction barrier up and you see piles of sand and gravel everywhere! But the project is moving right along. They’ve got good foundations up all along that section now. And several concrete posts. They’ve even started laying brick, I saw today.

The old wall was crumbling in that section anyway, but the real motivation is security in a 9/11 world. This wall will be quite solid, meant to stop a car ramming it or absorb a bomb blast. Those of us who’ve been around a while have a hard time with getting too serious about this, but the DA community (parents and staff) as a whole agrees with the Embassy point of view that we have to do what we can.

I will miss the open, friendly face that this 10 foot wall will erase. The guards (like Dominique here), for the moment, won’t change. They are not the most military-looking crew, but they have done a fair job of catching thieves over the years.

// posted by Tad @ 12:36 PM 0 comments