The Palmgrove School or “Palmgrove Christian Seminary” as it is called, is a private school that is owned and managed by the Palmgrove Community.  It has a capacity of teaching about 1000 children from kindergarten to high school.  The Palmgrove School employs about thirty six teachers. There are also about 12 non-teaching staff, such as administration and management, at this school.  This school was built by the Hutterite Church to try to help the needs of education in Nigeria.  Many miles were pedaled in the Bike-a-thons by Hutterites at home to help raise funds for this cause. | Read the rest of this entry …

When we first arrived in this distant land across the sea, I was fascinated by the strange and beautiful trees.  Coming from Canada, I was used to our rather thin trees, trees that faced cold and impeding winters every year, and therefore it takes our oaks, poplars,  maples and coniferous trees a long time to grow.  Here it is entirely different - to quote Lance from his blog of April 2006, “We have to be careful not to drop any ripe bananas because as soon as they hit the ground, they start growing so fast that you will find yourself 10 ft in the air on top of a fully grown banana tree!” | Read the rest of this entry …

There are many beautiful flowers growing here in and around Palmgrove.  I just want to give you a glimpse of  these beauties.  Of course I don’t know any names, sorry.  Also, maybe Lance covered some of these in his former blogs; if so, well, you can look at them again.

Here is Emase with a water lily.  Funny part is, these beauties open when it gets dark and close when it gets light in the morning.  That is what I can figure out anyway.   When we go to the stream and it’s dark, they stand open.  They look so gorgeously white in the darkness.  They do have a faint fragrance which smells very fresh and sweet.  Here is a little fish Emase caught as he showed us the lily.  This is the flower of the banana. It is a strange growth.  Can’t say | Read the rest of this entry …

It seems you can get used to anything.  If your palmwine has a little worm floating in it, just flick it out, or strain it before drinking.  I have to admit, I haven’t forgotten Talitha’s dire warnings of “don’t drink the palmwine”, but now I say- you just got to know how to do these things!  Let me give you a brief but somewhat complicated description of Palm trees.  I say complicated because I’m not 100% sure I got all the facts straight and it sure took a lot of questions, imagination and time to figure out this much.  Getting facts around here is something which takes a lot, and I mean a lot, of patience and persistence. | Read the rest of this entry …

This blog is about motorbikes, since some people commented that they would like to see them. They don’t exactly have souped up Harleys or Vulcans, but they have brand names like Qlink, CarGo and Demark. There are only about 4-5 different bikes, about 150cc. They look alike, have the same Jesus stickers plastered all over them and all smoke blue and are all capable of carrying around 6 people if necessary. Of course they are imported, coming ready to assemble in crates from China. This makes them as cheap as possible and their steel frames bend easily. A new bike costs about $610 USD, and they can run for about half a week on a tank of fuel, which costs about $7 USD. Though this sounds like pocket money, it is a lot if you don’t have it, right?. Then there are the small 90cc mopeds. They are more expensive because their quality is higher and they use even less fuel. I often see women driving these. | Read the rest of this entry …

This is my garden basking in the burning sun. I have to admit, it’s not doing too well. I told you about the corn, how they stay so small and skinny, and I still maintain it’s too hot for them. Jonathan, Keystone, I put these two pictures here for you to analyze. See how one plant stayed so tiny and the other is bigger, yet they were planted at the same time? The small one basically grew a head of corn, a teeny tiny one. Most of the corn were very tiny, but I managed to pick over half a bucket. Let me tell you, what they lacked in size, they made up in taste! | Read the rest of this entry …

It is Africa after all, so what did I expect? Things tend to be a little difficult from time to time. In fact, what highlights the moment right now, is the fact that a lot of things are, or should I say, are not happening the way they were before.

It all seems to have started when we had a meeting with all the baptized members of Palmgrove community. The topic was the problem with the financial standing of the colony. Inno briefed the people on where we had debts and payments to be made. He then continued to explain the problems of income. There is no income because the income that we relied on for food came from the construction equipment. As rainy season is approaching fast, there will be little or no opportunity for getting work. Even when we did get work, the loader and grader had their own repair bills to be contended with. | Read the rest of this entry …

I know, I know, it’s June already, but this project took place in May. In reality it was a small project, but admittedly it took almost all of May to complete. You see, the water house has a big plastic tank standing outside, near the building. This tank is an extra, as in backup, in case water needs to be treated with chlorine or some other such purifying substance. Being exposed to the sizzling African sun, this tank was in danger of housing algae and other unwanted components so a roof was needed for some shade. And so the prolonged project proceeded. | Read the rest of this entry …

I recall sitting in the Crystal Spring Shop snack room, drinking a cup of espresso and asking people like Mathew Bear for advice on going to Africa. He said “just make sure that the spare tire on your vehicle is good!” Even though that is true for anywhere in the world it is particularly true for Nigeria. The roads are very rough at times or just washed away. On top of all that people don’t worry about dropping nails or pieces of steel anywhere on a road. There can always be sharp stones or shrapnel at any time. Sometimes the road is so flooded that there is no road at all. | Read the rest of this entry …

PG Construction, as it is called, is a construction company owned and operated by Palmgrove. Fancy as that sound, it consists of two pieces of equipment, a loader and a grader, which of course is enough to be considered a construction company. These machines are rented out to people that bid on jobs. Typically the people that hire the machines are contractors looking for equipment that they don’t already have. We would like to say we fill in the cracks of the smaller construction contractors. | Read the rest of this entry …