Our first full and busy day !!

Day 9       24^th October

Wendy and I spent a pleasant hour with a hose and sprayer, wetting down all yesterdays brickwork and mortar so that it didn't dry out too quickly. In England, builders sometimes have to wait for days for mortar to dry; here its the opposite !     Sprinkling with water in this heat is a very pleasant task, and occasionally the hose slips, and we spray each other ! Small childish pleasures ! 

Jonathan worked down below with Stephen the master builder, cutting rods for the ring beam and we worked inside the workshop in the shade cutting thin wire into 18” lengths …. nearly 1,000 needed to tie the metal loops onto the rods. I'm sure these things are just bought off the peg in the UK !

The other workmen were busy completing the shuttering so that the uprights could have concrete poured into them to make the pillars between the brickwork. They started the concrete mixing before lunch-time. This is all mixed with shovels, up on what will be the first floor floor, but it of course involves carrying the sand up the stairs, the cement (50kg bags) up the stairs and the coarse gravel up the stairs. At least there is a hose for getting water up there. The gravel had arrived that morning in a lorry which tipped it out into the compound, covering all the women's washing with fine dust !

Top:  The children have a day off school and watch what we are doing !

Bottom:   Brighton, Milly and Ida 

Morris the tuk-tuk man came to get us at 12.30 and we all returned to Mill Hill House for lunch, but Wendy and I decided to return after to do more of the wire cutting. Back by 2 p.m., much to the surprise of the builders who I suspect think we are weak and fairly useless women ! But it proved to be far too hot to stay inside the workshop and cut wire, so after about half an hour we went on top to see what was happening, and there was a breeze there, so we stayed to help.

We proved quite useful, mostly loading up pans with sloppy concrete and lifting them up to Stephen who was perched precariously on the wall next to a pillar (this is a wall one floor up, only one brick thick, and with cement not fully hardened) … and he poured the concrete mix down into the pillars which were enclosed in rough shuttering. Safety is something completely ignored here. The worse bit for pouring the concrete was the wall over the stair well …. we had to have a sort of chain gang, passing the pans of concrete from one man to one woman to another man and so on, until it reached the top of some rickety scaffolding and Stephen could pour it.

Stephen perched 20' up on the wall, pouring liquid concrete into the reinforced uprights

(I forgot to take my camera for the afternoon shift, which means no pictures of the pouring process, alas).

Knocking off time is 5 p.m.; this is for workmen who start at 8 a.m., and work through with no lunch break.

After supper I had an interesting talk with Father Hans about one of the Pandipieri programmes, to get African families to adopt AIDS orphans, by paying Kenya health insurance for the adopting family. (All medical treatment has to be paid for). He said it both encourages families to adopt orphans, and of course it provides the whole family with insurance, which is very cheap, but not affordable by the families …. maybe about £20 per year. However, one problem that has emerged is that the insurance only covers an 'adopted' child if he or she is legally adopted, which means another cost to the family they cannot afford. So the programme is trying to find people abroad to pay the adoption fees for the adopting family. I had thought it might be very expensive, but not at all by our UK standards …. only about £20 - £25 for the paperwork ! Something I must try to raise money for, I think …....