We haven’t had water in 5 DAYS! I smell really bad even with washing my face, brushing my teeth, deodorant AND perfume!!! We have a geezer for hot water BUT it’s limited because we need city water to fill the tank and then heated and then comes into the house. Today I finally said “ENOUGH” filled the bath half with hot water and let it sit all day to cool then filled it the other half with hot water to have a bath. This is using most of the reserve but after 5 days I NEED TO BATH!!!! When I say hot I mean HOT, it’s scalding and it takes about 2 minutes to get that hot. I haven’t been able to do laundry so I am taking my laundry back to Harare and doing it at friends, well that’s not really true, she has domestic help so she’ll do it. I tried to do it once and she got upset thought I didn’t like how she did laundry or worried she would get in trouble because I was doing her job. Anyways it’s hard to get use to but it’s the way it is over here. It’s like taking laundry home over the weekend from University and getting mum to do it.

It’s starting to warm up here FINALLY! The nights are still cold but the days are really sunny and hot. ZESA has been touchy as well, we went 3 days without power and then it came on Friday for the day and was off 5:30 until 11pm, and none on Saturday until 9pm and today it’s been on 12 until I don’t know. I’m telling you I have mastered cooking on the gas. I’ve learned to cook all sorts of stuff in the gas; cheese sauce, potato wedges, meat, rice, burgers.

The drawings are all complete and printed and submitted to council for approval. All construction in Zimbabwe must include as “shed” on site. This shed is really a wooden shack that is used as an office. We appealed to council to extend it and use also to store the brick press and all it entails and make bricks inside and store the bricks. After much debate and negotiations we were granted the approval.

I have spent the last 2 weeks in Harare doing the not so fun part of my job. A big part of the project is using local products and being environmentally friendly. Since I am out in kamusha (the bush or rural area) we can’t get plumbing fixtures, electrical or mechanical SO we are getting bids from around the area specifically Mutare (an hour away) and Harare (3 hours away), which is still in the 800km radius of getting local materials. This is the environmental regulations for local products. So I had to get 3 quotes for each system, since I am not familiar with professionals here I asked around. This was harder than I thought. It included driving around Harare to 3 different industrial areas; Workington, Southerton and Msasa. These are the areas of trade industry, I took a fellow engineer (a Shona male) for help with translation because sometimes people have a hard time understanding what I want and I sometimes have a hard time understanding the accent and the phrasing. These areas have a few white people and NO WOMEN. So I stood out as a woman and when we walked into a place the engineer I brought was who they would talk to and I would cut in and tell them what I wanted, I was very specific and gave them a stack of paperwork so that there was no misunderstandings and gave them a timeline and emphasized it several times during the conversation. Most places were shocked that I was the one giving the information and after a while, my friend was becoming known as my personal assistant, I thought; “hey there’s an idea”. He also made most of the follow up calls because it’s even harder for me on the phone with accents and getting some people to understand what I want and the phone network is worse than useless. Then he really became known as my personal assistant. Of course none of my due dates were followed but progress has been made. I am just waiting on a few leftover systems quotes. I have become quite popular in the industry as the woman contractor. Some of the engineers I have been working with say I have a better network then they do.

I am back at home YEAH and full speed ahead!!!! I missed my bed, walking instead of driving, and just working on the project instead of doing administration work. I must say I am missing my personal assistant.

Something I’ve really noticed over the last few months and why I brought my friend along is that Shona people translate Shona into English so sometimes what they say and what they mean isn’t the same thing. Sometimes it comes off rude or the mix and match and you just haven’t a clue what’s being asked or said. It’s hard to explain over a blog but trust me it’s frustrating and sometimes really funny.

Well things have been busy as usual. I wanted to have the drawings finished and submitted by last week but it didn’t happen!!! The plumber is stuck out in a mine somewhere and the mechanical guys are just slow. So we are delayed AGAIN. The concern is that the rainy season will come and it will make it harder to build. I have suggested we start making bricks and trusses and such to at least have them ready to start building when the permits come through because the bricks take 2 weeks to cure (drying at a specific rate to reach maximum strength). So we are currently in a holding pattern. On the upside I’ve been asked to do some drawings for a school in Uganda. This is exciting but a bit hard without seeing the lot and not having the Ugandan building code but I’m figuring it out and plugging away.

Church seems to be the way to network in this country. I was meeting with the Electrical Engineer (from church) and was asking if he knew anyone who could install the electrical and generator, he introduced me to someone from the Shona congregation, I met with him and I think he may be more of a perfectionist than I am, he is excited and eager to help out and would be willing to train someone in Nyanga on maintenance and repair. When I needed a plumber I asked the Electrical Engineer again if he knew anyone and he said there was someone from the service I go to who could do it, so I met him and found out he’s an environmental plumber, that he was eager to do waste water management, rainwater harvesting and use low flush toilets, motion sensor sinks and would train someone in Nyanga to do maintenance and repair. He also comes with an impeccable reputation; while I was talking to him I discovered he is also a perfectionist. I was really excited and eager to use him as well, the trouble is so is everyone else. He is popular with the mining community and doing the plumbing for them, which is why I’ve had a hard time pinning him down. But it will all get sorted… eventually… I hope. The mechanical engineers are from the family service, they are newly graduated students and with the help of the Dean, a professor and myself have been plugging away at this project, the trouble is they are a bit slow and need a lot of attention. I am happy to help new to the field students as it a leg up for them when they apply for jobs and a good learning experience for both them and me.

For the plumber and the mechanical guys I had to go to the meteorological station and find out some weather information about Nyanga. This included: temperature maximum and minimum, annual rainfall, wind speeds, and sunshine hours. Now this isn’t as easy as going to google, the information is not posted online, you have to go to the station and fill out a form. The choices include; a monthly statement over a 30 year period (long term), a monthly statement over a 1,3 or 5 year period (short term), an annual statement over 30 years and finally an annual statement over 1,3 or 5 years. All this of course you pay for, so we started with monthly statements long and short term, and then moved to annual statements short and long term. The cheapest was going to still be steep so I went to the weather station in Nyanga and asked them what to do, they were able to give me a one year monthly statement for temperatures and rainfall for free but the wind speeds and sunshine hours were not kept at the local stations but at the main one in Harare so I went back to Harare and asked what it would cost for just the last 2 parameters (each item like annual rainfall is called a parameter) and was given a price I could live with. So after 2 weeks and lots of negotiation, I had all the information I needed to pass on to my people.

My poor car has been abused once again; my roommate backed up into my car instead of driving forward and smashed the rear window, and trunk so it wouldn’t open. So it went back to the garage where in 10 days it was fixed. The problem was that they couldn’t find the right rear window so it took some time to find one.

So this is what the Uganda project is all about. They want to build a number of small block schools with 2 to 4 classrooms that they can put all over the rural areas, where there isn’t a need for a large school but a desperate need for a school. The plan includes 2-4 classrooms separated by 1-2 storerooms. It’s a simple plan but one that means the difference between an education at home and having to walk miles or no education at all.

The weather finally is warming up, summer is just around the corner, and we are in a place like spring but more winter. Almost time to bring back the shorts!