Some recent set-backs

Wow, life has been interesting around here lately! Let me start with Tuesday... So, the day started out normally with all the students and teachers in their classrooms, along with the mission staff in their offices, when out of no where, a bus full of about 20 police officers shows up and begins going up to teachers and people in the offices, demanding to see their passports and work permits. We were not warned about this at all and were quite taken aback by the way the whole thing was handled. The police officers I crossed paths with were all pretty curt and unfriendly.

Now, if you remember from any previous posts of mine, dealing with immigration here is always a HUGE issue. It took months and months for my paper work to get sorted out properly. Because of this, of course we had a few people who's paper work is still in the process of being handled. But there was definitely no grace being handed out by these guys! In the end seven of our staff (and most of them quite essential around here) were sent home to await the completion of their paper work before returning to work. Had they come this time last year, I would have been one of the ones in trouble! I've never been so thankful to have two pieces of paper:

On Wednesday we had another surprise. Since both bus drivers were affected by the immigration issue and were unable to come to work, we had someone else come in to fill that role. We were only able to find one person, however, so we were short one bus driver, causing an interesting transportation issue on Wednesday. But to top it all off, we had very, very heavy rains, which resulted in very, very muddy roads. Just outside of the mission gate, our poor bus got itself badly stuck in some of this mud. A lot of manpower would be needed to get the bus unstuck. Therefore....boarders to the rescue!
What a mess!
"Don't worry, we got this!"

Ready for the challenge

Talking strategy

Taking their places
Extra weight for traction purposes
One, two, three....PUSH!!

Unfortunately the attempt was unsuccesful and all the kids got out of it was a fun memory...and very dirty! :)

(The bus did find its way out of the mud the next day, thanfully!)