When I went back to the old site of the perfume factory at Victor’s Pond, I found very few remnants left of what had once been a thriving production site. In fact, the pond was gone, but the eucalyptus saplings from whose leaves the pungent oils had been extracted had grown into giant trees suitable for electric power poles.

I guess it was partly my fault that those trees were cut since the next owner of the place, Panga, was pleased to help us realize a much bigger power plant than could have ever been created at the VP falls. We harvested those trees for the distribution line when building the Koda Hydroelectric plant that we installed about 11 miles from Rethy. We also used those trees for building the long access stairway and the inclined railway at Koda.

The local chief, Daudi Zabu Victor, helped me re-build the dam and restore Victor’s Pond, but the pond has long since gone downstream to Lake Albert, miles below. The log cabin type boathouse, built for the Rethy Academy dorm kids to enjoy at the pond, no doubt became firewood and has gone up in smoke. All that is left of that “Happy Place” is memories.

Does all we build last such a short time?  Does anything last?  Is there nothing beyond this life?  The world passes away along with its transient pleasures, but he that does the will of God abides forever. When we look at the places in the world we have known we look around to see if anything we have built is still there. We like to build things that last, that people might remember us, but they don’t. When God looks at the world He made He sees what men are doing, sees their innermost thoughts. It distressed Him at the time of Noah, because every man was only thinking and dreaming about evil. Only Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

They have photographed the entire surface of the world from space and the satellite images are regularly updated. I’m not sure how current the satellite view now offered by Google maps may be, but in a current search, I can’t even find the falls we surveyed at VP, though they must still be there, concealed by the heavy vegetation that quickly covers any unused land. In that area I can see lots of gardens and many more houses that I don’t recall being there. I can find neither the eucalyptus forest where we cut many logs for the Koda Hydro project, nor the cypress forest where we camped.

Maybe our impact on the people has a more enduring influence than the things we may build.

I think often of the dorm kids who enjoyed the activities at VP and wonder what their priorities may be now. How many remember the happy hours we spent there? 

I remember the time I was off looking for cork-wood with our kids while Ellen kept faithfully turning the chicken on a home-made spit over our camp-fire. She was writing letters to those who prayed for us. She didn’t forget the chicken, though I forgot the time. When the kids and I returned she was still turning the chicken. She had kept the fire burning. The chicken, under the foil, had become charcoal. That is still a happy memory.

While examining the satellite view on Google Maps, I also checked the site of the Koda Hydroelectric Plant and found that the surge tank was full of water. The penstock down the hill was no longer a light blue but still connected the dam with the turbine building far below. The white water showing the path of the river revealed that some of the river was following the diversion route we had used around the rocky island during the building of the dam. I wonder what percent of the water is being lost. I wonder if electric power is still being transmitted to Rethy through the 11,000-volt underground cable.

The flight of steps we built to access the turbine and generator are gone. There were more than 400 hardwood treads, each nailed to custom cut notches in the heavy eucalyptus logs that we used to make the stringers. The slope of the stringers varied as we laid them down the steep hillside. We calculated the run plus the rise for each step maintaining a 14 ½ inch total. For the first steps the run per step might be 10 inches and the rise only 4 ½ inches. In the steeper sections the rise per step increased and the treads were closer together. We didn’t treat the log stringers with any preservative so they had rotted away in less than 20 years.

All the notches were measured and cut by Emil, Jelo, and I. They were both sons of Musa. We called him “corn Musa” because he was one, of very few, who was willing to cut his corn when the kernels were still soft. It wasn’t like Golden Bantam, or Sugar and Gold, but it was the closest to sweet corn we could get in Africa. Musa exhibited a special joy when he visited and sung his songs and practiced his English on us. He even became the subject for a calendar illustration drawn by my daughter for her art class at RVA

Emil became a member of the Koda Hydroelectric staff and was a faithful worker with a great sense of humor. He found the “fouu” in the parafoudre, lightning arrestors, we installed. He knew some English and the fool was apparently hiding in the French name for those arrestors. A rather dangerous place that offered an alternate route for lightning surges that might be picked up by the telephone lines we had installed.

The telephone system failed after only a few years of service.

The wooden railway we built to deliver the tons of equipment, ordered through the Ossberger Turbinine Fabrique company in Germany, was also gone. To get the huge penstock pieces to the location where each was to be mounted we had built an inclined railway down the mountain side anchored by short posts with log crossties. The ties were notched with a chainsaw to receive the heavy 4” by 8” hardwood rails that would carry the transport cart and its load. The cart’s wheels were one side of the split rims, used on the Toyota Stout trucks in Zaire, and they fit nicely between the rails. With help from Kpambu, Mugasa and Mbikpa in Kwandruma I was able to locate the necessary parts to build a cart strong enough to carry five tons.

Kpambu was a very resourceful mechanic, able to fix almost anything. He was a faithful Christian and worked closely with Dr. McMillan. Mugasa was an honest successful business man, always willing to do hauling for the missionaries. He delivered rock to Puu for the building of the FM radio installation there. Mbikpa was the most powerful, richest man in Kwandruma with multiple wives to run each of his various enterprises. He did all he could to encourage the hydroelectric project as the electricity offered him ways to make more money. He didn’t pretend to believe in God. He died of AIDS, believing the doctors in Kenya, who changed his blood, could cure him. Only the blood of Jesus satisfying the justice of God can open the way to eternal life!

So did anything I had the privilege of building in Zaire last very long at all?  My primary assignment was to be a Rethy Academy Dorm parent and to teach the missionary children at the school. During the thirty years we were at Rethy I had many opportunities to build what seemed to be the most important project at the time. Is anything still there, being used to help the people we had been called to serve?

Steve McMillan, whose younger brother Tim was in ninth grade at Rethy when Ellen and I first became dorm parents, also returned to Rethy as a missionary. Abrahamu, the janitor at Rethy for so many years, had certainly told him to come back and work at Rethy as he told every one of his boys. As a Canadian he was instrumental in getting approval for a water project for the Rethy Hospital as presented by Ray Jealouse for funding through CIDA, the Canadian International Development agency. Steve left for furlough about the time the shipping container filled with the project materials arrived at Rethy so I was given the privilege of doing the installation. Steve was also later involved in helping with the Koda Hydroelectric Project when I was away.

The water project involved erecting a water tower, assembled from the prefabricated plates and beams, on Hospital Hill and installing the pump at a water source in the valley. The challenge of building a large enough holding tank in the muck, in the marsh, was nowhere presented in the plans. Where does one dig a hole in a marshy valley and find where the water comes from as it follows the layers of black marsh muck, light grey clay, and the harder red clay sub soil found when digging down on the sloping hills that formed the valley?  Where is the best place to build?

The most likely spot had to be the existing spring where the local people came to draw water.

We decided to build something like a cylinder of cement and sink it in the marsh at the spring site, making holes in the sides to let the water in, then pump the water from that reservoir up to the hospital. Everything was done by hand in Zaire.

I’m sure the wisdom came from God to make the cylinder by building one short hexagonal section at a time and adding additional sections on the top as it sunk into the mud. We built the inner and outer forms held apart by eight-inch tapered, smooth, round blocks. We would later knock them out letting the water in after the cylinder was in the ground. We filled the form with reinforced cement leaving the rods extending up for the joint with the second section. The forms were later removed, ready to form up the next section on top of the first.

Sinking that section into the mud by digging away the material inside, and under the cement wall, was a dirty job, willingly done by the hospital workmen. I found Filipo had total trust in the idea, working hard as he and the crew made the hole in the swamp ever deeper, watching the cement cylinder gradually sink into the ground around them. After the third section was added and the material removed, from inside the now deep well, it wouldn’t settle any further. Using an extension ladder I climbed down into the well and with a short sledge hammer pounded the blocks I could find back out into the mud around the well. Water gushed in from some holes and dribbled in through others. I quickly climbed out, the water following me up the steps. The well was about ¼ full when we pulled out the ladder.

I am certain that the cylindrical well is still there, but then, even a rich mix of Portland cement, sand and gravel doesn’t last forever. The project was completed before Steve returned from leave and he cared for the reports to the Canadian sponsor, since I was just an MK from the Congo, with an American passport

I do know that the special imported pump, that worked so well at first, had to be replaced. I also know that the water in the valley somehow wandered elsewhere, though Steve did all he could to direct the water back to the well. That problem started when a new Koda power pole was installed at the pump house.

I can think of a number of other projects that were destroyed during the looting when Mobutu’s unpaid soldiers fled at the time of Kabila’s takeover. Steve, a skilled mechanic, disabled his Mercedes G Wagon trying to save it and the angered looters, who couldn’t fix it, burned down the Titchie Dorm with fuel found in the garage. I had very recently rebuilt the Titchie dorm roof installing attic trusses to utilize the upstairs. It was fun installing the stairs and the wainscoting but now it is all gone.

I think we can confidently say that all that is seen, all that we build is transient, only that which is not seen, is Eternal. Why would people ever deny the existence of the creator God and worship the creation trying to force people to keep it green.

Acknowledge God. He says, “Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman wakes but in vain.”