This business of soil testing has been a HUGE headache. First off I went to the Agricultural Lab, they said no they didn’t do construction soil testing try Soil Labs. Soil Labs doesn’t exist anymore so I went to the Ministry of Agriculture to find out if they knew, they suggested the Chemical and Mechanical Soil Testing then they sent me to I went to Engineering Soil Analysis Lab and they sent me to SIRDC. SIRDC does all sorts of things, they are a government facility that does Environmental, Agriculture, Construction and the list goes on. The gentleman I met with there said they could do the work and showed me the package, he said he’d have to get a quote and let me know. I was so excited I has spent over 2 days and had drove all over the city and FINALLY someone could do the work. He called me a few hours later and… it was going to cost the earth for 3 tests and I thought, “Are you NUTS?” So back to the drawing board, I went back to the building code and thought there has to be another way and I noticed a table, which had soil classification and the load that the soil can carry for each class. I talked to a farmer friend who also does minor construction and he gave me the name of a lab, that if I gave them the table with the classifications and asked them to test the soil and classify it, they would do it for a whopping $20/sample of a kg. This was music to my ears, I was so excited and happy and thought about time!!!! So they are going to test my soil and have the results back to me in 5 days!!!!

An NGO called SODIS has a method of purifying water. The basics of this system are using the suns UV rays to purify the water. It takes about 8 to 12 hours. Apparently they have an office here in Zimbabwe where 3 million people in rural areas are using this system. I have yet to find this office or anyone who has heard of SODIS, but the upside is I found the brochure online with pictures of how the system works and how to implement the system. I had the brochure translated into Shona and made 54 copies for the families at the AIDS clinic who are in a high-density rural area and get water-purifying tablets from the clinic. They tablets are donated but they have a chlorine taste, which the Shona aren’t fond of and at some point someone pays for it, this system is way better and they don’t have to worry about the taste. So the clinic is July 3 so we’ll try it out and see how it goes. The concern we have is that during winter (right now) there isn’t enough sun to do the job, so I’m trying to find the Harare office of SODIS and find out what they do during this time of year. We are also looking at a large-scale system to put this in the library. So stay tuned for an update.