The Shelter is in the middle of the imudugudu (village), and is 5m x 8m (or close). It has no walls and no floor, but a corrugated tin roof with a 500mm pitch. It has PVC guttering on one of the 8m sides that fills a 2000 litre PVC tank.
It took us three days to build, (one day was called on account of rain) and involved most of the people in the village at some stage. The women cleared the land with hoes and hands, whilst many of the men watched! Then the women left and the men watched as Isaac and I marked out the ‘foundations’.
But their curiosity soon got the better of them, and like all men they were experts; we were soon teaching them how to measure out timber and post holes, and then how to make and mix concrete.
Interesting question: How do you make concrete without water and sand? Answer: you send your twin-cab utility vehicle on a 30km round trip to the closest ‘public’ water hole (we didn’t want to use their dwindling water supply). But of course when you can’t speak the language you don’t know that it is that far away. It took 1.5 hours to get the water and sand.
But how can you take a vehicle to get two containers of water and not suggest that any one else that wants water collected should bring their containers, (instead of walking 6km to get it)? You can’t can you? There was a mad flurry of activity as yellow plastic containers came from all directions; we ended up with over 50 containers in the cab.
We worked well into the afternoon, and they offered to slaughter a goat, but I realised that it wasn’t their goat, so declined the kind offer. They were disappointed that mzungu wasn’t hungry and hadn’t brought them soda and food. Maybe next time?
It took us three days to build, (one day was called on account of rain) and involved most of the people in the village at some stage. The women cleared the land with hoes and hands, whilst many of the men watched! Then the women left and the men watched as Isaac and I marked out the ‘foundations’.
But their curiosity soon got the better of them, and like all men they were experts; we were soon teaching them how to measure out timber and post holes, and then how to make and mix concrete.
Interesting question: How do you make concrete without water and sand? Answer: you send your twin-cab utility vehicle on a 30km round trip to the closest ‘public’ water hole (we didn’t want to use their dwindling water supply). But of course when you can’t speak the language you don’t know that it is that far away. It took 1.5 hours to get the water and sand.
But how can you take a vehicle to get two containers of water and not suggest that any one else that wants water collected should bring their containers, (instead of walking 6km to get it)? You can’t can you? There was a mad flurry of activity as yellow plastic containers came from all directions; we ended up with over 50 containers in the cab.
We worked well into the afternoon, and they offered to slaughter a goat, but I realised that it wasn’t their goat, so declined the kind offer. They were disappointed that mzungu wasn’t hungry and hadn’t brought them soda and food. Maybe next time?
