the end

Jo'burg airport 18:56

Sitting here I realize how hectic these last few days have been... meetings, panels, drawings, site, thatch and all the rest. It feels like the end of a cycle but also the beginning of a whole new and scary one.

Although I will be back in less than 3 weeks to try and (finally) get the LCCU finished, I feel as though I'm leaving...

This morning when I visited the site a truck load of thatch had just arrived and that gives me hope that by the time I'm back we will be able to get on with it. In the mean time I have left the site in the hands of Baba and Sally, who will keep the pressure on the contractor and hopefully send me back some info and photos so that I can keep an eye on it. It will be a kind of virtual master of puppets if it all goes well, with me being able to still manage the site from thousands of Km away... Marvels of the modern world!

This is the last post which will be transcript onto my thesis so it is my last chance to thank everyone. I'd like to thank Camille and my family for the patience and staying behind me even when I had to change my returns, my teacher Luis Urbano (FAUP) for giving me the chance to embark on this task, to A4A, Martin and the Sentebale team (yes Baba, you too are Sentebale) for all the support I needed and all the good times, to Pete and Susie (K4L) for housing me when I was "homeless", all the workers on site, Ntate Linakane and Ntate Sello for the good job so far (let's speed it up now), all my other friends and people which have supported, helped and been there during this experience, I'd also like to thank specially Harper, Sally, Sam and Oscar for making my stay in Lesotho such a great one!

See you all soon!

Frames and session3

Session3 which was meant to be held yesterday had to be rescheduled for today, as my car had to be serviced and the clay was inside…

Yesterday was nevertheless important as we finally managed to meet the contractor and get a go ahead with the plans to organize for the move in. Let’s just hope that he keeps his part of the deal!

Today I visited the site early on and the poles for the roof where all up, and all we need now is to brace them properly! The frames Tau was making around the windows look good, and I can only wait until he does them in the courtyard.

The panels’ session went really well, today we used forks to make the patterns, the result was much better than the others. We now have close to 100 panels and we still have a few more bags of clay…

Tomorrow I will go back to help the children to make more, but I still need to finish to organize for the weeks I will be away.

Session2

Session two went far better than session 1!

Although with fewer kids and less panels produced I have to say that the results were much better. It is easier to supervise a smaller number and the results have then to be better.

Still we are a few short (when I say a few I mean close to 80!), some of yesterdays panels got damaged this morning, or late last evening when it was decided that they couldn’t be kept where they were…

So in the light of this event and fearing further damage and neglect I decided to bring all the panels to the Sentebale office and see if we could salvage any!

Session 1

Not a bad start… 42 done 108 to go!

The children managed to understand quite quickly what they needed to do. In a few hours we managed to produce quite a considerable number of panels. My biggest worry at the moment is how many will survive?

Of the tests I made all my samples survived, but I did it under a quite “controlled environment”. It was only me so I managed to keep the consistency of the clay all the way through. With 20-30 kids this is something that is hard to do… They were so keen to do it that I’m afraid that they might have ended up mixing wet and dry clay and not taking all the air out, or cutting the patterns too deep.

Time will tell and if we are lucky there will be some nice ones that will survive to tell the story. In the end they had fun, as Harper, Sally and Sam could see, and that is what matters.

Panels aside, and the plastering problem solved, today was also important because I managed to finally speak to the contractor. He is up in the mountains and is trying to organize the thatch we still need to finish the building. Monday he will be back and we’ll be able to hopefully set our eyes on the deadline.

Chop, chop, chop…

Fortunately the children were late from school so I had time to pop to site, my morning had been chaotic and spent between buying clay for tomorrow and getting a tyre fixed (just before I was about to leave I noticed it was flat).

This visit to site proved to be one of the most important so far. If I had managed to go early in the morning, I could have avoided it from start but I still managed to stop the mistake anyway.

All the building has been plastered with 2-3 coats (the third one is not exactly as I would have wanted but it performs well nevertheless) but today when only 6m were missing on the exterior wall, they tried to cut a corner. They claimed that the first coat could not be applied because of the sun, but as soon as I explained, it took very little time to convince them that it could not be like this. I would not certify such work, and they understood that they could not get away with it. So chop, chop, chop, let’s take it all off, and do it again properly.

As soon as I can tomorrow I will head out there just to check if it is now up to standard. It would be a pity to spoil such a good job at this moment.

This sorted I got back to the kids and we had a nice introductory lesson, about Litema. As I may have already mentioned, Litema is the traditional form of decoration used in the Basotho households. It originated in the XIX century with the introduction of the plough, and roughly resembles ploughed fields, hence the name. I have decided that it would be nice to introduce this in the new building and today we started a 3 day workshop with which at the end I hope to have produced enough panels to use on the building.

The children enjoyed the session, and some of them picked up the idea quite quick. It was also interesting for me that many of them did not know the meaning of this type of art. Luckily ‘Me Lydia was keen to explain it to them and hopefully from now on they will be more interested in it.

All about the panels

Yesterday not much happened apart from the fact that we managed to get bundles of thatch which we needed, so the thatching has now restarted, however we will need to get a lot more and be a lot more organized if we are ever to complete this building by its new date.

This week was supposed to be all about panels, and in a way it has also been, I had just expected to be able to focus on it, and have ended up having to multiply the minutes and hours of my day to be able to deal with everything.

The first frames and panel have been mounted on site, and they look good! Now we just need to produce another 43! We decided in the end that it will be safer to produce them all the same size as I was afraid that the longer sections might bend and deform. In this way it will also become easier to make and will speed up the process.

Tomorrow I will head off to Bloem to buy the materials we still need for the workshops and then I will try and rush back for the introduction with the kids at the LCCU.

But before I could even start to plan tomorrow’s trip I had to deal with small problem. It had been planned that Ntate Tau would leave our site and go and work on another project (where allegedly he is more needed), I could not let this happened so after a few hours I managed to get someone else to go and keep Tau… If there is any chance of achieving a miracle I need workers that can perform!

Site visits

This weekend was all about showing Mike and Vicky around different projects in Lesotho. We kicked off with a visit to the LCCU.

The visit went well, with Mike (who had visited this site months ago, even before I’d ever seen it) thinking that the change was huge. Unfortunately it was not as good as I hoped but we’ll get there….

After a site visit, with hundreds of photos, we visited the SOS children’s village and the QEII playground.

Then on Sunday we visited the K4L site and had a small brain storming session of what are the different options for that site.

I still managed to get hold of Ntate Linakane on the phone and he told me that the grass is available. Let’s see how much. The Steel guy will meet me tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to seeing if the panels work well on the walls.

1month after

By chance I ended up going to the QEII hospital today, which was actually quite fortunate, as it gave me the chance to check on how it is aging.

The tiles are reacting better than I expected but might have to one day be taken of or replaced, and the paint has worn off a little, nothing serious! The nicest change was that some of the doctors got together and bought a see-saw for the kids.

The LCCU is still trailing and today there were talks of setting a new deadline. I will not say what it is as the last 3 times I didn’t manage to keep to it. But it would be great if this time we could.

Frames and A4A

I went to the lab this afternoon and although they told me that the water is ok for consumption I did not manage to get the full report yet.

But let’s flashback to the beginning of the day! I went to site to meet Ntate Linakane and discuss the next steps in the construction as well as the possibility of completing one section as a sample for the rest, and I ended up helping with the setting out of the frames.

Only when I saw the 12:10 plane take off did I realize that I was late to pick up Vicky and Mike, A4A, who will be here on a 5 day visit. Oops!

I picked them up late, hoped they don’t mind, and during this weekend we will take them around the projects in which they have been involved.

I wish the LCCU was a bit more completed but I hope they will still be impressed with the progress!

Analysis

Yesterday I spent the day trying to tie up some of the (still) loose knots.

One of these is still the water situation. With Playpumps laying bellow the radar we have decided to start moving on to plan B, which in reality was plan A…

When the contractor priced he priced also for the water pump. Later when Playpumps said that they would donate a pump, we were happy and decided to go for that. As it seems that they will not be able to deliver. We have already moved back to sorting out this issue.

However before we do any trench digging or erect the tower, the water needed to be tested for quality. This was the task I started yesterday and completed today.

Yesterday I went to the water Lab, got the appropriate containers and arranged a time to deliver them back, and this morning I went to collect them and have already delivered them.

Fingers crossed now for the water to be suitable for drinking!

(results come back tomorrow)

Something was missing…

Today the mountains, which have been our constant background, were gone! It has been so dry and windy in the last couple of days that the air is full of dust and visibility is now no more than a few kilometres.

Unfortunately this was not the only thing that has gone missing. Yesterday I visited the site to check up on the thatcher’s progress, I cannot say that I was surprised that he wasn’t there. I did how ever strange the fact that our watchman was no where to be seen. To be fair he might have been inside the courtyard, as he claims he was, but I somehow doubt it! So how did 5 bags of cement have disappeared?

It is not the biggest theft ever, and Ntate Sello has already reported it to Linakane, but still it is sad and serious that it has started to happen. I hope the watchman takes his responsibilities a little more seriously from now on!

As for the building, all still the same, moving but moving slowly…