What we have not achieved…

It’s been a month and we have not built a single wall, the roof is no where to be seen, we have not finished to dig out all the slabs or to correct the previous builders mistakes, we have not been able to provide extra shelter for the children, we have not managed to get to an agreement on what to build Lydia as a replacement for her old house, nor have we accomplished any of the other small projects that I’ve been parallel working on.

We have not managed to discuss with TED about the Biogas system, or agree on a price for the extra repairs on site…

But don’t distress! I don’t! ‘Cause I know that we are getting there!

All the things that happened or didn’t happen in this first month were necessities in a way… Without the rains, the structural problems would not have been evident and we might have ended up building an unsafe house (for all I know the roof might have just made the whole thing collapse). The children might be in a tight space (but no point re-housing them if their caretaker says that they would not like the new accommodation). Lydia’s new house might have ended up being just too big for anyone or too small for her (to achieve balance one sometimes needs to give in). The playground still needs testing before we can actually build it (the idea is good now let’s see if it works).

As for TED I’ve finally received a call and I must say the delay has served them well as they are almost on track now. And the price, that one will slowly have to adjust itself and that’s as certain as the fact that be building will not expand from 390m2 to 442m2.

There are two Portuguese traditional sayings that summarize this quite well “Há males que vêm por bem!” and “devagar se vai ao longe…”(Ruff translation: some bad things happen to be good! And slowly we will get there…)