Friday and Saturday

Thursday morning we arrived in Niamey at 3:30am. David Totman met us at baggage claim, and against all hopes an expectations all of our baggage came off the conveyer belt. We were holding our breath for customs, as we had hardly been looked at thus far and felt we had it coming (especially carrying so many power tools), but they just waved us through without hardly making eye contact.
We went to the Totman's house after dropping off some team members at a mission guest house, talked for a little, and then slept for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon, David drove us around the town a bit and showed us the projects we would be working on. That night we ate at a Vietnamese place. I don't know if the food was really amazing or if we were just really hungry, but I can't remember the last time I enjoyed fried rice so much.
Friday was work day. Becca, Jared, Don Murdock, and I were assigned to building desks. There were 30 hand-welded frames and a stack of plywood varying in quality from bad to unusable. By lunchtime we had cut out all the pieces and had most of them sanded. The afternoon work went slower, since we discovered some of the pieces had to be as custom-made as the frames, and we had to glue some of the plywood back together.

The roofing and tree-trimming crew did well, too. The roofers got 22 of the 33 sheets of metal up, and the tree folks estimate they are also about 2/3 done.
We had dinner at the American Rec Center, connected to the American embassy here. They have a little hot-dog stand, a TV broadcasting college football, and a swimming pool with no water.