I’ve been back in Nyanga for 60 hours and I have hit the ground running. I’ve been putting together the construction documentation, consolidating quotes, conference calling, meeting with distributers, meeting with council and the list goes on. I went to council to ask about an inspection schedule. Council said that I would need to hire a structural engineer to do some of the inspection, as no one at council is qualified. I told them I am a structural engineer and they said that I could do the inspection along with them. This seemed odd to me that they would allow me to inspect my own site, but I wasn’t about to argue.

Now, it's been a week, since I've been back and I've been madly trying to get the rebar (reinforcement bar) schedule sorted, I had forgotten how much rebar goes into a building and my schedule was 2 pages long consolidated and 4 pages broken down into sections like columns, footings, concrete slabs, etc. Then I went to meet with a contractor who lives in town, who I go to for advice, opinions and help and he said that they are having troubles with quality of steel that the Chinese are turning out rubbish rebar because they can sell it cheap but the trouble is then it needs to be tested by Zimbabwe Testing Association and you may end up putting twice as much rebar and your columns and slabs may become 2 or 3 times as thick. This I thought was nuts!!! So I now have to sort this out. This contractor has agreed to help me out, he has been doing this for 30 years and so knows much more than I do especially when it comes to the Zimbabwe system, this makes me feel much more relaxed and calm. Our chat today also included quotes for materials like plumbing and electrical and the products I shouldn’t be using. For example there are 3 possibilities for gutters; PVC (plastic), zinc and chromadex. Now my preference is PVC because it has a long life and doesn’t need much or regular maintenance. I went to 2 plumbers, one said it wasn’t available the other said he look into it and see what he could do, but it shouldn’t be a problem. The plumber who said no said to use chromadex. I had never heard of this so I asked my contractor friend he said, “stay away from it, the paint chips, it’s expensive and it needs regular maintenance, the man who wants to use it must be an agent for them”. I knew this would happen at some point that someone would use my lack of plumbing knowledge or electrical or whatever against me. For a long time I was researching everything so when I met with people I could ask questions and have some idea what they were talking about, but this became too much. I’ve said it before but this is why contractors are in their late 30’s early 40’s and NOT mid-20’s. But thank goodness for my contractor friend and he helped me out and so we talked for 4 hours about all sorts of construction materials, methods, Zimbabwe construction and I left feeling a mixture of frustration and relief. I go back to Harare tomorrow for the weekend to sort out some FINAL quotes of materials I can’t get in kamusha (rural area) like low flush toilets and LED lighting and sort the final plans for the rainwater harvesting and waste water management. So wish me luck, I’ll need it. Also it’s AIDS weekend already, where does the month go? So I’m going to find out how the solar water treatment is going and are they using the pamphlets that we gave them in June, thanks to David Ford’s genius idea.