Our remit HAD been to put the second storey and the roof on the workshop building; when we arrived and saw this ...
... we decided after discussion and a few hasty texts and emails back to HQ in England, that it would make more sense, as there was a limited amount of money and only four of us, to try and complete what was already there ... i.e. get the inside walls and ceilings plastered, the outside rendered, door frames made and fitted, windows ordered from the welders and fitted, etc. Then the building as it was could start to be used by the orphan boys who wanted to train as carpenters. The upper room and roof could be done by another group at another time.
First job was to get those bricks moved from outside the door over to one side of the site. There were by our calculations, about 4,500 of them, and each one weighed about 3 kg ! The maths defeats me, but I think thats over 13 metric tons of bricks ... or am I wrong ? We moved them one by one or two by two if we were feeling strong; sometimes we formed a chain gang and tossed them one person to the next and at other times just two of us moved them ... pick up a couple of bricks, walk to the new stack, put them down, walk back ... do it all over again, for what seemed like days ! Eventually we had the doorway clear and a new stack of bricks at the side of the site ... and in clearing the bricks we found many frogs and lizards and beetles hiding within the stack !
Then the daily task of Sieving Sand began ! The sand for the work came from the local river, and was full of stones and grass and leaves, so it all had to be sieved. At this point our tools were added to in the shape of three, yes three metal basins, called 'kariah's', which meant we could take it in turns to fill one with sand, a second person carry it to the workshop door, the third carry it in and dump it in the sieve, and the fourth one of us scrape the sand through the mesh of the sieve ! We sieved sand for about two hours every morning until we had a huge mound of it, enough for the workmen to use that day to make the 'plaster' for the walls ... a mix of sand and cement, made sloppy and flicked onto the walls (lots falling off !) and then rubbed smooth.
Did I say that after sieving the sand, we were the labourers who mixed the cement powder into the sand, and then adding bucket after bucket of water, turned it over and over by hand (one and a half shovels, remember ?) ... until it was mixed ? Oh boy ! I think a large proportion of the liquid added to the cement was mzungu sweat !
Sieving sand ... and more sand ... and a Sahara of sand ...
We usually took about half or three-quarters of an hour off for lunch ... and the chance to sit down in the shade and ease aching muscles. I strongly suspect the African workmen thought we were wimps; they didnt stop work from 8 a.m. until 5.30 p.m. ... whereas we finished for the day by 3. I think we would have ended up in hospital if we hadn't had a lunch break and stopped work early. Did I say we were doing all this hard physical work in temperatures of over 90 F ?? In high humidity ?
Our after lunch tasks were easier; the two men - Nigel and Dan - mixed more 'plaster' while Gill and I often sat with the women who lived around the site and chatted and bounced their babies on our knees, until it was time for us to go and do some washing up of the wheel-barrows and the bowls, ready for next morning. Sweeping up was also an afternoon task ... with the one small brush, made of stiff grasses !
Flicking the dirt towards the door with the one small brush !
(More to follow ...)
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