Day Eight- November 9, 2007

On Friday morning (our last day in Georgia) we went to the open air market and Gil gave me a list of things to buy while he went off elsewhere to find other supplies. I was left alone to find stuff on his list and then try to purchase it all with no translator. It was challenging, but I got everything on his list, and found him after about 20 minutes of searching. I wish you could see this place. It is a huge jumble of very small open-air shops with very small aisles running in between with an occasional alley running perpendicular to the isles. The ground is mostly mud and puddles because it has rained for the last 3 days. There are hundreds of men in all of the aisles talking, shopping, and smoking. It is quite the cultural experience. After I found Gil, I followed him around for another hour looking for some specialized fuses for the panel box. We finally found them and then found our way back to the car. We then went to the orphanage and arrived there about 11:00. Gil immediately began assembling parts for the panel box while I recorded all of the purchases for today. Gil and I then reworked my letters to the Ministers a little bit so I could print them out before Gill turned off the power so he could begin his panel box work. After printing out the letters I began interviewing the children and taking their pictures. I worked at that until about 5:30 when we broke for a short meal of fried chicken, fried potatoes, cucumber and tomato salad and bread and pickles.

After eating, I went back to interviewing the children. It was dark by now so we used a small candle to light up our room. It is pretty cold here today with temperatures in the lower 40’s and it is not much warmer inside. The kids were all great and very cute. One group of kids I interviewed was four sisters who have been here for six years. They were ages nine, thirteen, thirteen, and sixteen. I also interviewed a brother and sister, age five and six. The five year old girl was just so cute and precious. Irma looked at me and asked me if it was OK for her to take the little girl home with her. The poor girl had a terrible cough and coughed for the entire interview. She also had a badly stuffed up nose. The kids all said that they liked it here mainly because of the attitude of the Director and the staff. They all seemed to like each other a lot, except for the three bully brothers. The Director told me today that he is taking them to their mother in Tbilisi tomorrow and telling her that they cannot come back. I finished up the interviews at about 6:30. I then took some more pictures of the children. The kids love having their picture taken so much, it is really fun to watch them grab their friends and strike up a pose. The workers finished cleaning up the attic today and they did a very good job. All of the asbestos scraps are gone and all the other debris was cleaned up also. They hauled out over 350 heavy-duty bags of debris. I insisted to the Director that the debris be hauled away to a dump that would take hazardous waste. He was reluctant but finally agreed and the truck came this afternoon and took it all away. I wrote out a receipt and paid the attic workers for their services. It cost $75.00 total for their labor. I spent another $75.00 for the bags and for dust masks for the workers.

One of the bids came back today and it was about $50,000.00. One thing I need to do is apply for tax-free status here in Georgia because they have an 18% tax on all purchases. If I can get tax-free status, then we can do much more for our money. Irma is going to get the paperwork for me to apply for that. She is also going to look into hiring a project manager to oversee the contractor so I do not have to keep coming back here to do that. I then spent the next several hours helping Gil on the electrical work. We worked until 2:15 am and then had to dash back to the hotel because we needed to be packed up and out of the hotel by 3:30 am in order to catch our flight home. We arrived home Saturday evening exhausted because we had been up for 48 hours without any real sleep, but every minute spent in Georgia was well worth it.