Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Events of the day

Today Noah, Anisia and I headed off in the morning to run some errands in town. On the way we passed a semi truck that had a tire blowout and flipped on its side. This is a common scene along the highway where we live. It’s the main road between the port at Mombasa and our neighboring country, Uganda. On a warm day we hear a number of blowouts just near our compound. Kenya doesn’t have the standards for their trucks that we have in the States (or if they do they aren’t enforced which seems to be the case in many areas here). The tires that these trucks run on are usually old worn retreads. Not only that, but they drive way too fast. The speed limit for trucks here is 80kph (55mph) and 40kph through town. Many of the trucks blow by our place at 120kph even though they should be slowing to 40kph. The drivers just honk to let you know they’re coming and you better get out of their way.

When we got back home we found surveyors from a gasoline company that is running a pipeline from Mombasa, Kenya to Kampala, Uganda. One good thing about this line is it will reduce the number trucks hauling gas passed our place but the down side is the pipe is going right through our property. There is a 25 meter no build easement that we will have to maintain. This causes a problem because we will have to move the guest house that we’ve already began building. There should be an assessor here within the week that will evaluate the damages we will incur so we can be reimbursed. Please pray that this works out in our favor since it is causing some problems with the layout of the buildings on our site.