Up! Up! And away…

March 9th at 9pm I will fly out and the mission will begin. As a case study for finishing my diploma at FAUP (Porto Architectural School), I've decided to volunteer and join A4A (Architects for Aid) in one of their humanitarian architecture projects. The projected on which I've been assigned is the construction of the LCCU (Lesotho Children Counseling Unit) centre in Lesotho. The building has been halted and an assessment, survey and new proposal and program will be drawn up in order that the building might finish to be built. Once this is completed a second trip will be organized and I'll be overseeing the building on site. The objective of this blog is to keep record of the work that is being done, both for the benefit of the members of A4A in London, FAUP to whom I'll also be reporting, my own record as well as friends and family that might want to know what I'm up to. Please comment on any post that you have an opinion, as this will undoubtedly help me in the completion of my thesis. Disclaimer: The information displayed on this site has not been previously edited or checked by any A4A staff and I'm the sole responsible for it's contents. A4A or any of the other involved organizations are not to be hold responsible on any account for what is published on this blog.

Wednesday, 18 April 2007

Good evening Maseru!


Yes it’s true! If by any chance you were out there listening to the MoAfrika FM 99.3 football special tonight. Yes it was my voice that you heard!

I was tricked by Baba and Sebata (radio presenter), into commenting on Premier League Radio tonight! But thanks to Manchester United’s excellent form in the past weeks and Chelsea nevertheless excellent chase I managed not to make a complete fool of myself!

But enough about fun and lets talk about work. Today I met with the Building College and we have organized that a team of 2 students will be in charge of the design and execution of Mé Lydia’s new house. I will be acting as an advisor through out the process. This is a project that has resulted from the replace, after the fire, the house that used to home the children of the LCCU. Because of the type of project that it will be and the amount of work involved it was decided that the best way to deal with it was in establishing the partnership described above. It will be an interesting opportunity for all of us!

We went to see if the solution for the Container could be resolved but we are still having problems in finding storage space for the existing fill of the container.

Tomorrow we will go and measure the depth of the borehole. I might have forgotten to mention before but whilst I was still in London I contacted PlayPumps and they agreed to install one on the site. The PlayPump is a carousel that pumps water up into a tank when the children are using it.. It’s a system currently being installed all over Africa. For more information check this website http://www.playpumps.org/

Still a few things to sort out before we start on site next week but all these extra assignments have kept me pretty busy.

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