I love this picture!  All 8 Elders heading out after our morning meeting with President and Sister Jameson.  This little lane ends right after the house next to ours. The piles of rocks and sand are being used on cinderblock homes being built on the left.  When you get up to the trees at the top, there are more homes and a little outside 'shop' where people can watch a TV mounted on the side of a building and have a drink.  Then you have to make a sharp right turn onto another dirt lane that leads to the main road.  We make this trip many times a day.  Sometimes we come home to a pile of sand or rocks right in the middle of the lane and Elder Wheatley gets out and helps the workers shovel it out of the way for us to get through.  

 

This is Elder Wheatley's garden:  1 voluntary beanstock, several voluntary tomato plants supported by bamboo sticks from the swamp across the way, and peanuts.  We have running water, so even though we are entering the cool, dry season, we should be able to keep the garden going.  Along with the cinderblock homes in Pointe Noire, are the little wooden homes, usually with 2 or maybe 3 small rooms.  All the cooking is done outside in metal pans, using briquets that people make and sell for cooking.  There is a water spout at the top of the little hill outside our gate and also one back onto the property next door, where most of the people in this area get their water.  Most of the population here does not have running water and many don't have electricity.  We have power when  it works and now we have a generator that we use a lot because lately the power goes out almost daily.