“You are here again. How nice”

“We thought you had gone back to your own country.”

“Did you bring, soap, toothpaste, batteries, reading glasses and more?”

Just a few greetings when the hatches opened at our house. For us, it was wonderful to be back in Apetina after a year. The cleaning of the house went faster than expected. Very nice. Because of the arrival of the MAF crew of four who stayed overnight, one day after we arrived in Apetina, we also had to speed up the cleaning.

They brought a lot of fun and for us it was nice to be able to be hospitable to them for once. Next Wednesday we will even have 6 MAF people visiting us. They will be halfway through the two-day shuttle to fly the Bible school students back to their villages. This time we are better prepared. We pre-cooked cassava fries yesterday. There are several pieces of meat and fish in the freezer, so a nice meal should be arranged in no time now.

Speaking of the freezer. The village generator has been broken since last November. That’s how long the whole village has been without power. We are extra grateful that our solar system is still doing well and providing us with power. By now, with a number of replacements, the system has also been running for 12 years.

Too little rain has fallen for months. This means that cassava, the Wajana’s main food, is not growing well. Many people have little to eat, besides the fish and meat they catch and hunt. This also means that there is less cassava to make drinks from…. from our point of view, a positive development caused in unpleasant circumstances.

Last Saturday, a government crew came to visit Apetina to register the names of the children, for child benefits, of the elderly, for their elderly support benefits and of the people with disabilities for their benefits. They were staying with our neighbors, so we could enjoy all the fun. This registration started Sunday morning so we saw very few people in church.

This week the church started practicing in the afternoon for the Easter Conference. All the songs resound through the village. The girls and women are practicing the dances so it will be nice in sync next week.

Good Friday a MAF family will fly our way to celebrate Easter here with us and the village. Easter Monday we will then fly back to town together.