Day seven (Rest and Rain)

Today was the churches day of rest but for our team of six it was a day of restlessness. So we called up Okay and headed of to the market. We ended up taking a very round about route that started with a trip to mechanic village. The village is basically a junkyard with scattered houses were the mechanics live. We went to Okays mechanics house to check on his car which has a broken crank shaft. When we got there they were on lunch break eating Gary and Soup (read day five) in the house which is made of scrap tin and surrounded by wrecked cars. After a quick talk with him we headed back to the market. We got to the highway and were standing there trying to hail a bus when a guy in a flatbed truck used for hauling livestock showed up and offered to give us a ride. We hopped in and had the ride of our lives in this huge cage down a highway in Abuja. Okay video taped us while we had a dance party and got the craziest looks from the people driving by. When we got to the market the driver gave u the news that the ride was absolutely free. When we got to the market we spent the first few minutes looking for soccer jerseys but had to take shelter from the rain quickly as it started pouring. When the rain let up we went to the fabric store to look for material for our Nigerian outfits. We then proceeded to get towels and light bulbs, after which we got a bus and headed home. The buses here are old Mitsubishi vans that are missing windows and the doors don’t close most of the time. There were some times when we hit the bumps that you could feel the frame on the bus bend to sickening angles. When we got back to the house Chad went to check on the stage project, this is where Sam comes in. Sam is the percussionist at the church and is Josh’s right hand man. He has a background in real estate so he has been helping us with all of our building projects. When Chad had called him up to get some masons to try and finish the stage while Prince was out on visitation, Sam had come down to help get things set in order. He decided to stay and supervise the work to make sure it got done right and ended up skipping his day off and started mixing and moving concrete so they could get it done on time. The stage project turned out perfect and just in time for Prince to get home and see it. Right now while I am blogging Amanda and Katherine are trying to do my hair in corn rows. More later from the Abuja Braid Squad.