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…