Our team has been working hard on the building site for a couple of days. it’s a little hard to see progress but a lot is being done. in the past few days we have hauled about 100 buckets of water from a pond about 200m from the building site, used a trailer to haul 3 loads of aggragate (gravel) from one side of Tabora to the other (loading by shovel at the supply yard unloading by shovel at the building site) and today we cleared a 30m road to provide better access at our building site.
The work has been hot and dusty. For the most part we are all well watered (bottled), covered in sunscreen, wearing sunglasses and hats. very few mosquitoes. Christy got what we think was sunstroke yesterday and she stayed at the FPCT centre for the afternoon. She’s doing better today.
Today, Saturday, we started at 8:30 AM and finished at 1:00 PM. Had lunch (food is always tasty and there is lots of it — rice, ungali, salads, some fruit, usually chicken or beef but once a great tasting fish — chicken isn’t the fat juicy kind you find in NA). Methuselah is our cook and he is a great guy serving us for all meals each day. after lunch we cleaned up and went downtown so all of us could buy material and get fitted for a dressy African outfit. the girls have a Tanzanian lady helping them, the guys have Elias helping us.
It’s amazing to see what these people live with (and without). With a 20litre bucket and a bicycle they can pretty well do 90% of what they need to do. Most of the places they live in (from what we have seen) would be considered unlivable in our world. the current home for Juma, Haruna, 5 other orphans and the grandma is beyond comprehension. one small room (8 x 10??), one mattress and an entrance way (5×5??) is what they have. When the place is done, they will move to a mansion — even if running water and sewer is a few months away. It looks like they won’t move in until about July. The house is quite a bit more than we had imagined and everything is labour intensive.
We bought a shovel, 2 rakes and a wheel barrow. The shovel broke in about 1 hour, the rakes looked strong but bent to become close to useless and the wheel barrow is so shakey that it takes two peope to load it — one to load, one to hold. I’d love to talk peavey mart into sending them a few really good implements.
(Nick)
