Friday, June 18, 1976, 6:00 pm - Day 143

I didn't get a chance to look at my motorcycle on Sunday, so I figured on Monday. On Monday I couldn't get ahold of the feeler guage which is needed to set the timing and the tappets. The missing of my engine on my motorcycle was gradually getting worse each day. On Tuesday I tracked down the feeler guage but was told I couldn't use it until the next morning. On Wednesday I checked the timing and the tappets and everything seemed fine, so I then started looking for other things that might be wrong with my Honda which might be causing the trouble. I cleaned the air filter and the fuel filter, adjusted the carburator, and even oiled and tightened the chain. When I was done I started the bike up and it ran worse than ever. It really gets frustrating when you fix something only to have it come out worse than if you left it alone.

Finally, Skep came over and I told him my problem, and so I had him start it up to see how it ran. We never got it started. In trying to start it, the kick starter got stuck halfway down. It did this for quite a few tries. It has done it to me before, but never more than once at a time. We finally push-started it to get it running, but even then it went back to running lousy, which was my first problem. The kick starter now made it three things wrong with my motorcycle.

The next morning I went out and managed to push start it and rode it over to the CARE fuel depot, where I planned to just wait until one of the fitters (mechanics) came along. Luckily, Dave happened along before too long. He is the volunteer in charge of all of the fitters and knows motorcycles inside out. He gave it a test run and immediately determined that I needed new contact points, which we had a spare of there at the depot. He changed it and then gave it a few more test runs, stopping inbetween to make adjustments to it. Each time I had to push him to start the motorcycle. He also told me what to do about the kick starter.

That afternoon I sat down with my motorcycle and took off the muffler, kick starter, foot rest, and crank case, all after first draining the oil. All of this was necessary to be able to get a look at the rod that the kick starter hooks onto. It has a gear on it which connects into the gears on the engine. One of the gears there was loose and had many of its teeth broken. Also, I found quite alot of little pieces of metal lying on the bottom of the crank case. I put the kick starter back on to turn the rod, so I could see how it worked. Instead of this one gear turning as it should, it just sort of leaned sideways until it touched the crankcase wall, where I could see marks where the gear had scraped it. The gear needs to be replaced, but I didn't have the part so I just put everything back together and put the oil back in. Today, I fooled around with the timing so now my motorcycle runs better, but still not as good as it should.

Sunday, June 20, 1976, 11:00 pm - Day 145

My supervisor, two other volunteers, and I had a footrace today. My supervisor has been running every day to keep in shape, but the rest of us hadn't run anytime within the past 4 months or more. The course was about 0.8 miles long and mostly downhill. We started out and Mr.Sesay (my supervisor) sprinted out into the lead. I thought he was going too fast so I didn't try to catch up but just tried to keep from losing too much ground. I could tell that I was out of shape before I went 50 feet. It was extremely frustrating for me to realize that my body wasn't going to do what I wanted it to do. I couldn't open up my stride like I wanted to and I was quickly getting very very tired. I had to slow my pace down and was seriously contemplating walking. I held off the temptation to walk, though, and managed to make it to the finish line. I was second behind Sesay and all 3 volunteer engineers were dead tired. Sesay, instead of stopping, just turned around and ran the course back to the beginning and then through to the end again. I didn't time myself but I figure I was probably doing an 8 minute mile pace, which isn't very good. I am again considering my getting out at least a few times a week to do some jogging. A couple of miles every other day would do my body good.

Sunday, June 27, 1976, 4:00 pm - Day 152

That evening everyone decided to cook up dinner at the CARE resthouse instead of eating out like we usually do. It was good. We cooked up about six pounds of spagetti and lots of sauce, and I made two cakes. There were probably about 15 to 20 people there for dinner and everything was soon gone. Later in the evening all of the big brass from CARE and Peace Corps, who all happened to be in town, dropped by so that we probably had about 40 people at one point. It was, more or less, a spontaneous party, and was nice because everyone was mellowed out and it wasn't loud or wild, just good. After everyone had finally gone, those of us that were left went out to the bar. I was talked into some dancing there and was finally starting to get the hang of it. I would have to say that I even enjoyed it. After 2.5 hours we there, we came back to the house and went to bed. This was at 4:30 am.

Most of us were up at 7:00 am the next morning. By 9:30 we were all over at Mama French's for breakfast. Mama French is an elderly lady in Bo that runs a small cook shop. All volunteers that come to Bo, go to her place for breakfast. For 65 cents she gives you 2 eggs, a sausage, and 3 pieces of toast, which is pretty reasonable. There is one drawback about eating at her place, and that is that you shouldn't do it if you are in a hurry. If you are there alone it isn't too bad and you can get your food in about 20 minutes. If you come there with quite a few others, like we usually do (sometimes 8 or 9), then it can take 1 to 1.5 hours before you get your food. This we don't mind because we know to expect to wait a long time, and so use the time just in conversation. By 11:00 we had eatten and were back at the house.

At 3:00 pm we played basketball. It was my first time to actually play basketball, since before high school I think. I wasn't too good, but I seemed to improve as the time went on. I only made one basket out of about 4 shots during 5 or 6 games, during which we play to 11 points, with each basket counting as 1 point. The last game went into many overtimes because we have to win by 2, and we finally won, 19 to 17. We had 3 teams of 4 players each, with one team sitting out and then challenging the winners of the previous game.

That afternoon I baked another two cakes, by popular demand, but they didn't have to twist my arm too much. That evening, three of the other engineers and I were invited over to dinner at Mr.Sesay's (one of my supervisors) house. We had all been Mr.Sesay's boss at one time or another, the other three having been in Sierra Leone for almost two years and Mr.Sesay having worked for CARE for two years. He had rice chop for us and also macaroni. We wanted to show our appreciation for all of his trouble he went through to fix dinner and so we filled our plates, two with rice and two with macaroni, and then after we finished that we switched and filled our plates again on the other. By the time we had finished those two helpings we were pretty well stuffed. He had the plates cleared and washed and then brought back and put on the table again. It seemed he wanted us to have another go at it, and so we all had one more helping. By then we were over-stuffed and nobody could get us to eat more. I ate pretty good that night. I had one plate full of rice and two of macaroni. Inbetween times I also managed to consume two 5-cent loaves of bread, 3 cokes, and 2 cups of water.

That night, when we went back to the resthouse, I frosted the cakes and we all proceeded to eat them. I put one in the refrigerator and so it managed to make it through the night untouched, but was quickly devoured the next morning. By 11:00 am Sunday, everyone was getting hungry again, and so we made cheese and onion omelettes.

I forgot and left out one meal. At about 2:00 pm on Saturday we had submarine sandwiches which were excellent, the first time that I've had them in country. All in all you could say that we all ate good this weekend, excellent even, and plenty of it.

I've gotten out and jogged about 3 times now during this last week. Each time was for about 2.1 miles and I've been averaging about 7:30 per mile. Each time I've managed to finish without walking, and am getting to a point where I can start considering lengthening the route. I don't think that I will be working too much on increasing my time because I think that lengthening the route and keeping the same pace would be better for me, at least for awhile. When I get up to spending a certain time jogging (maybe 30 minutes), then I will change to keeping the total time constant at 30 minutes and then work at getting more distance for that same amount of time. Right now I am just running for about 16 minutes every 2 to 3 days.