It’s the hottest weather I’ve ever remembered in my LIFE! What is the point in showering if as soon as I get out I need to get back in again! How do you wear summer clothes in a country where shorts and tank tops aren’t part of the dress code for women unless you are a child, or want to be suggestive, these are the times when I miss Canada. Things are getting busier as I start planning to come home, the poor contractor is having a little heart attack, as the building won’t quite be finished when I leave. We had an interesting discussion about the gutter system and water conservation and the state of the world. We are trying to sort out the finer points of the gutters, trusses and roof points. The air vents are inserted and the building is getting ready for trusses and roof to be put on. It’s getting exciting and seeing what the building will look like finished!!!! We had an inspection after the ring beam (a beam that goes above windows and doors the perimeter of the building with reinforcement inside), which took a week to sort and lots of negotiating. First he was meant to come on a Wednesday afternoon, we had paid the fee and had our receipt and surprise, surprise he never showed. He was away the Thursday and Friday. Monday they have morning staff meeting from 8-12 and said to come after lunch, which is 2pm called at 2pm to make sure he was coming and surprise, surprise he was too tired. Tuesday he came and checked the site and told the foreman we hadn’t paid so he couldn’t sign off on the building and I couldn’t get a hold of him for the rest of the day. Wednesday I went to the office and sat there until he saw me showed him the receipts and paperwork proving we had paid and had everything sorted and made him sign the form so we could continue on. When I asked him what the trouble was yesterday and if everything was fine, why couldn’t we carry on and I would just come in and show him the paperwork he said he did let them continue, which is untrue as the foreman would have carried on. So now that the air vents are down and the wall plates are on, we can have another inspection, which then means 1 more inspection until the certificate is signed that the building is complete and then never again will we have to deal with council or inspectors!!!! A few weeks ago we had a meeting about how we wanted to open the building and what we should do. We thought of having a traditional ceremony like in Canada with First Nations, we thought of having a hand off to a headmaster of a school as it is a education building, we also thought of having a hand off to the Library Board, who will run the building. It was made clear that it would not be handed off to the government or any government body. It was also made clear that a article in the paper needed to go out now before government and the local council started taking credit for something they were not a part of and have made very difficult to complete, and work with. We started noticing council bringing people by showing off their building, which we did want the community to take responsibility for but since council has reneged on their responsibilities so far we have decided to give put it in the hands of the library board made up of people from the community, from teachers, to Lion’s Club members to store owners to parents. This is a problem that I’ve noticed in this country wanting something for nothing, not wanting to help get things up and running but taking the credit, say they are “owed” things, that the west is why they are in trouble. Hopefully with this building the government and council will leave it to the library board and the community and it will thrive.

No I haven’t died… just been really busy, my boss from Canada was here visiting all the countries that The Solon Foundation helps out and he was here seeing our progress, meetings and other such fun things. Then I was busy in Harare buying LED lights and fixtures, which is much harder to do then you think in a developing/3rd worldish country where most electricians here don’t know what LED means. So the electrician we’re using knows what LED means but hasn’t been able to find any so I said I would find them and it was a bit of a challenge but finally SUCCESS! An amazing store called Electrosales, which is more of an all around fantastic any building thing you need store than a electrical only store. And the best part is that it’s not horrific expensive like other stores here of that caliber, which I’m noticing that lots of things here of importance like construction material is more expensive than in Canada, and that prices change like the wind. For example one week cement is $11 a bag the next week $22 a bag. The fluctuation depends on how people are feeling that week and how desperate they think people are and what they think they can get for it. I went to a lighting store that has the latest and has access but for $150 a light/fixture, Electrosales had the a better fixture with the same light for $46 easy decision. But the lighting store knows that people will pay for horrific prices for the latest, when what I really wanted to do was picket outside the store with a sign saying “For a third of the price go to Electrosales”. Finally as it is in Canada, it’s flu season here and I was unable to avoid it and had the flu. Our project now has electrical conduits in the columns. Conduits are the plastic tubing, which the wires go through and the plastic casing which switches and outlets fit in. There is a reason October is called suicide month and I forgot how hot Africa can be. This is why I’d rather be freezing cold then boiling hot, you can always add more layers but you can only take off so many. Thank goodness for frozen ice packs that can be put on necks and lower backs. Even when it’s raining and there are thunder storms and it’s the rainy season, it’s crazy hot and I easily drink 4L of water or more.

Sorry it’s taken a month to update this blog. Things have been picking up and gaining speed. The walls are going up and there are gaps in the walls for the windows and doors and the shuttering (wooden outline) for the arch is being constructed. Minor changes to the building have been made here and there as we go through construction and learning things and discover things about the building. The bricks are manually made, which we have discovered is both a curse and a blessing. The curse is that each brick has to be made perfect or they don’t lock into place like Lego like they should and we run into trouble. The blessing is the mould is brilliant, the bricks are big and thick and sturdy, they have 2 holes going from top to bottom in order to put plumbing and electrical through and any other cables, they don’t need mortar to put them together just click them together and as it is meant to be easy ANYONE CAN DO IT! Theoretically. The clicking mechanism is a brilliant idea… but that’s the issue it’s brilliant in theory. Using humans always creates room for human error. We’re all new at this technology and it’s take months to learn the pros and cons, the benefits and weaknesses. The machine has caused us issues and we contacted someone in South Africa who has used this technology for years and he has had none of our issues. This leads us to believe it’s a “Friday machine”. A Friday machine is built on a Friday when factory workers are thinking about the weekend and not about their job so it tends to have issues. Our bricks are 20% thicker than they are meant to, which means more material and the brick isn’t balanced as it should be structural-wise. The bricks made by men aren’t perfect every time so they don’t all fit perfectly together so the construction workers have to chip away at the bricks to make them fit, this was causing HUGE time delays. So we decided to go against the design and put in some mortar on the top and bottom of the bricks so that the bricks would “click” together and not have to be chipped away saving time. There would still be no mortar on the sides and that has worker out brilliant. In the day and a half they’ve been back from their break huge strides have been made. We might actually finish this building in the 6 weeks I have left here. The weather is getting hotter, which means thunder storms, which I love but zesa does not and we are getting more power cuts. Last week I had 30 hours straight of no power, not thunder storm related just luck of the draw. But all over the country has had bad power in the last few weeks so maybe we’re due for a few days or weeks of good power or that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Timing is everything…TIA (this is Africa)… and on and on with reasons and excuses about the time delays for the project. My permit runs out mid-November and the new timeline is February. The foundations were a learning experience and we didn’t place them the way they are meant to in order to compensate for a double wall that we used. There was some chipping away at the bricks to make them fit but again with a change in orientation we knew that would happen. Now that we are at the walls we thought it would be much faster and easier, click, click, click like Lego but that has definitely not been the case. The septic tank was built using the CMU (concrete masonry unit) and the rate of construction was 1 builder using the CMU’s to 3 builders using Bamba bricks on the walls. I thought the rate of building was faster and it is but after seeing the rate of CMU building I became worried. So we thought maybe switch to CMU’s and increase the rate of building but what would we do with all the bricks we made and we’re less than 3000 from our target of 18000 bricks. So we thought of various ways to improve the system. Part of the issue is human error, we thought about getting an electric sander or mortar grinder and fixing the bricks to uniform size but that just seemed to risky. I suggested talking to the construction foreman who is using the bricks and in charge for the construction workers onsite and ask his opinion. We told him about electric grinder and he said that it wouldn’t only be a human error problem with the brick makers but with his junior guys. He’s watched them use the bricks and their lack of problem solving with rogue bricks. He’s teaching them how to make the best use of them. He thought that the best way to minimize EVERYONE’S error is to put 5-10mm of mortar between the tops and bottoms of bricks, they’d still click but the mortar would compensate for the angle/slope/dimension and chipping issues. We thought this was a great idea but I had questions, how would they match the bricks from walls with no mortar just brick to mortar walls side by side, the change in height would be an issue, also this would change the wall height, which is not a bad thing but needs to be considered. The wall height will be fine as long as it’s shorter than the existing wall height of 3.5m we’re fine. The foreman will know how to meld in the bricks and mortar so it will work out but I’ll keep a close eye and monitor that just to be sure. So we’ll see what the new speed is and if this changes the new timeline and can we finish this by mid- November. I’m seeing doorways and window spaces that really make the building seem real, standing in the offices and seeing that this will be where someone comes everyday to work, and seeing the furniture and the layout of furniture in each office it’s coming together, VERY SLOWLY but it isJ The concrete slab is finished so we’ll see what mortar Bamba bricks look like tomorrow and Wednesday and see how much faster the pace of construction is. At the current rate of construction the contractor thinks it will be end of February until the project is complete. So hopefully adding mortar will speed up the construction process and speed up our timeline. Construction stops for Christmas December 10^th and comes back January 10^th.

I have some news…wait for it… I am staying until November 14^th, my permit runs out on the 19^th so that leaves me 5 days. The project has taken much longer than planned and I’m sure no one is surprised. The bricks are just not the amazing invention we thought/told they would be. The brick as a design is great but the method is not so great. The machine wears and tears easily if you don’t do the process exactly perfect the bricks don’t come out right and don’t fill properly and so they don’t just click. The manual says that any unskilled person can do this and that is just not true. We’re using seasoned, experienced construction workers and they’re have a tough time and it’s taking much longer then expected. What was meant to take 6 months, we’re now looking at a year. The contractor wants to change materials to a CMU (concrete masonry unit). The septic tank is made using the CMU’s and 1 worker is working at the same place as 3 using our bricks. So we’re going to cost out a new plan if built the library using some of our bricks and some CMU’s.

So great news yesterday, we are meant to have an inspection of site after the foundation is done with the DPC (damp proof coarse) just before we lay down the concrete slab. We wanted to do the inspection in stages so we could start putting the concrete slab down so we could start putting up walls, while the foundation on the east side is still being finished. It took forever to finally get the inspector to site then he took a look at the foundations not even finished and the inspector said "keep going I don't need to see anything until the next stage" which is wait for it...the top of windows where typically the lintel goes or in our case the ring beam. The inspector is meant to take a pickaxe and hit the foundation in to make sure it is solid; our inspector did not do this. He was just so impressed with our foundations he just let us move on. That’s the good news, the bad news is wait for it… you guessed it my car. I spent almost 3 weeks in Harare waiting for my car to be fixed but I was able to make a 24 hour trip home with friends, which gave me enough time to check on site, meet a few people, love my dogs, change my suitcase, sort the house and my domestic and get in the car back to Harare. The car needed a service but the fuel pump was shot and even after they changed the fuel pump there was still a problem, which after changing all sorts of things turned out to be the HT leads the connect from the fuel pump regulator to the spark plugs, which control and inject fuel and car goes. I got the car back and was driving it along a fairly busy Harare street and fuel sprayed all over the road from the front of my car. I pulled over and turns out the hose connected to the engine from the fuel came off after it had been replaced. The hose clip was faulty and even after putting it back on every time I turned the car on the hose came off and fuel sprayed. So I had to have the car towed to a friend’s house 5 blocks away and I got a new hose and clip and fixed the car. So the project is progressing and over the next few days I’ll be able to see how fast the walls will go up. There was another issue to deal with. Our property slopes down from the existing building to the new building, this works in our favour as we can use gravity for the sewer and water. So at the lowest point is where the septic tank and soaker way are. There are minimum dimensions to the septic tank and soaker way, the contractor who is also our plumber asked if he could make them deeper and narrower for ease, which as long as they meet the requirements then it’s fine. However because he made them deeper in an already sloping site it caused a few issues when he started building them. The rear veranda now has to be lower requiring 3 steps, a retaining wall and a foundation of it’s own. As well where the piping starts in the existing building that veranda also has to have it’s own retaining wall and foundations. So a little redesigning on my part but problem solved. And that’s my life this month. I am now back and home and back to normal…well almost give me a few more days and the routine will be back and the dogs will stop following me around like I’m going to leave them at any moment, which makes me feel like a bad parent but they’re starting to relax and let me shower in peace!

Huck has been sick he developed tick fever. It took me a few days to notice as he doesn’t eat much to begin with, he started eating even less until he stopped eating, he became really lethargic and just wanted to sleep all day and he was more than his usually cuddly. I thought it was strep throat, which is common among dogs out here, so I was checking his throat and noticed over a few days that his gums were getting white and his eyes were getting whiter, he was going pale, anemic. As I was going to Harare anyways I thought I would take him with me but he started to fail fast so I took him to the Nyanga vet, who was drunk at the time it gave him the shots and the next morning he was returning to normal. I still took him to Nyanga with me to keep an eye on him and good thing I did because he was injected wrong and development a lump at his injection site that filled with fluid that had to be drained.

Harare was good, the AIDS clinic that I go to once a month was great, unfortunately one of the granny’s died in a public transport accident, which unfortunately is a weekly occurrence. I love going to the clinic because these granny’s are in their 70’s and 80’s and starting over as parents with 7 or 8 grandchildren. One granny has 17 relatives living in her home!!! Lots of the families rent out rooms in their homes to make money, so they sleep in the living room or kitchen and rent out the bedrooms. Some of the grandpa’s work as security guards, which seems a bit odd as an 80 year old man fending off robbers doesn’t seem like such a good idea. They do what they need to survive.

My car is back at the doctor, I was driving and all of a sudden the engine would rev and then the speedometer would go down to zero and the car would stop. I would just turn the key off and then wait a few seconds and then turn the engine back on and it was fine. It was due for a service so I took it in and found that the fuel pump was gone, so they put in a new one and then found that the fuel pump regulator was broken. Right for the non-car people the fuel pump regulator, regulates the amount of fuel that goes into the fuel pump which when you push the gas fills with fuel and makes the car go, so the harder I pushed the gas the less fuel that went in and the car died. Fuel pump was easy to replace, the regulator not so much so it’s been a long time and I’m stuck in Harare BUT I got to make a quick trip home to check on the project, the house, take Huck home and see Molly.

The foundations are done, just waiting for inspection, which I hope to do Monday so that the concrete slab can be poured, more on that very soon...