It takes a village...

By Jason

John and I recently took a trip to Kibuye Hospital to help oversee the arrival of a container with medical supplies.  We are amazed and grateful that a great variety of eye equipment, medical textbooks, and various other pieces of medical equipment made it from many corners of the US to central Africa largely unscathed (except for a minor plague of termites).

More amazing than the success of the trans-Atlantic journey, however, was the ability of the Burundians to extract large, extremely heavy pieces of equipment from the container, get the container off the truck, and move it perfectly into place with a jack, sticks, and their hands and ingenuity.

The truck got stuck twice while backing in, but the
truck driver did some fancy footwork to get unstuck.

Unloading a crate with an eye laser in it - the crate
weighed over 1,000 lbs.

The container was emptied and then pushed sideways off the
truck onto some soft dirt

Jacking up the container to get it onto freshly cut logs

Sliding the container on truck rims with sticks

Final resting place

That same day we checked in on the sites where our houses will be.  There are some large tree stumps that needed to be removed to prepare the site.  Again, with nothing but their hands, hoes, and sticks, they removed this stump from its hole, all while singing, so as to push in unison.  Enjoy the video below…