In the late 1990s, much of the world’s focus was on the upcoming new millennium. Out with the old, in with the new. In spite of living in a society that more closely resembled the 13th century, I found myself becoming somewhat caught up in this frenzy of updating and upgrading to receive the 21st century in style. I decided the time had come for me to get to work on a home-improvement project that had long been kept on hold. The time was ripe, I determined, to put up some real walls inside my house.

For the past seven years I had lived very simply, with few household conveniences. This was due in part to the fact that I resemble neither Tim the Toolman nor Bob the Builder. I can put up with a lot of inconvenience for a long time before I consider the situation untenable. It was also partly due to the fact that I had made a pact with myself that I would not put up interior walls in my house until I reached a reasonable degree of fluency in the Wilo language.

I should say that during those first seven years, I did have interior walls in my house, but they were an unsightly black color and were as thin as plastic. They were, in fact, unsightly black plastic walls.

These ascetic walls, while not aesthetically pleasing, had served me well over the years, and they fit in fine with the décor of this little mud house that had no running water, no sinks and counters, no cupboards, no electrical outlets, no light switches, no interior doors. Bare bones.

But what better way to greet the new millennium than in a house with real cement-block walls! So I went to the corner building-supplies store and bought a bunch of cement blocks. Then I called up the local contractor and he took care of it from there.

Oh… wait! Sorry. My dreams are intruding into this account. There was no building-supplies store; no contractor. When I finally convinced myself that I should set aside a couple of weeks to do this home-improvement job, I wrote down a purchase list. I would need a few trowels, a couple of buckets, a level, bags of cement, a few bags of lime and a big paintbrush.

But what good does a purchase list do in the jungle? Not much, unless you’re needing to start a fire, or if you run out of toilet paper.

Fortunately, our missionary team extended well beyond the jungle. There was a support infrastructure in place that was set in action. Enter, stage left, the missionary pilot. When one of the airplanes landed in Pakali, I sent my purchase note out to town with him. Thanks, pilot.

The pilot, though, had little time to be running around town buying the things on my list. That wasn’t his contribution to the team. The pilots were generally up before the sun, preparing to spend the entire day either flying to the various mission stations, or doing the mechanical upkeep on the aircraft.

When the pilot landed the airplane in town, another missionary was there to meet him, a missionary whose responsibility was to organize and put together cargo for flights into the mission stations. He took the incoming cargo, passengers, and mail to the main office in town. My purchase note went with this missionary and was placed with other pieces of mail on a table. Thanks, flight cargo administrator.

Eventually the office secretary sorted the mail and put my note into the mailbox of the supply buyer. Thanks, secretary.

At some point, the supply buyer checked his mailbox and found my note there. The job of the supply buyer was to attempt to decipher the purchase lists of missionaries living in isolated areas, go shopping, and then take the heat when the missionaries complained that he bought the wrong thing. He added my list to his list of lists, and prepared to go shopping. Thanks, supply buyer.

The supply buyer was a nice guy and all, but he wasn’t about to buy the things I asked for out of his own wallet. He needed to get some money from me. And that’s when the people in the finance office got involved. The finance people were tasked with the job of depositing and withdrawing money from each missionary’s account whenever donations came in or expenses were incurred. The finance people checked my financial account and then authorized the supply buyer to go out and spend a bunch of my money. Thanks, finance people… I guess.

Once everything was purchased, it was loaded onto a commercial boat that passed by Pakali several times a year, and a couple of weeks later we were unloading the boat and hauling the hundred-pound bags of cement up to my house.

The next step in putting up walls in my house was to bring up mounds of sand from the river. We soon had a good supply of sand on hand, but before we could begin putting up the block walls, we had to have blocks. I had obtained a mold for making concrete blocks, so we set about mixing sand, cement and water into just the right consistency. We shoveled a little into the mold, tamped it down, flipped it upside down, carefully lifted the mold up and voila, our first concrete block was… a crumpled pile of cement and sand. Eventually we got the mixture right and our first block sat there majestically. Now all we had to do was repeat that routine a thousand more times.

A few of the tribal people wanted to learn how to make blocks, so they pitched in and helped. Once we had made a sufficient supply of blocks and they had cured and hardened in the sun, I was finally able to start putting up my walls. Who knew that home improvement in the jungle would be such an exercise in teamwork, tedium, and patience?

So it was that the new millennium found me comfortably ensconced in my updated digs, enjoying the luxury of having rooms partitioned off with concrete block walls, and doors that opened and closed and swung on real hinges. Could the advent of kitchen cupboards be on the horizon? And how many people would be involved in that project?

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