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!