I’ve met with Council and had them sort out the pegs showing the boundary lines of our property. I had done the elevation points of the property and knew the dimensions of the property but wasn’t sure of where the points were. Theoretically it all works out, practically is the questions and the answer “Madame I’m sure you’re fine, we’re not concerned” doesn’t work for me nor is it legal! But you never just talk to one person and it never just one meeting, it was 4!!!! One thing about the Shona they love meetings and love to met about meeting, which I am not! I want to meet and sort it out and move on, get things moving, I now understand the phrase TIA “This is Africa” and BMT “Black Man Time” and why it takes so long for anything to happen. That was Monday, Tuesday someone was to show up at 8:30 and do the marking, 20 to 9 he still hadn’t come, so I contacted him and he told me, he’d be there at 9. 9:10 he still hadn’t shown, so again I contacted him and said when he was ready to buzz me, as I had other things to do. By 11 I had still heard nothing, so I thought, if I hadn’t heard anything by noon I’d go to the office. At noon my other half for the project, the administrative one called saying he was on site and with the head of the construction department for Council. I got to site and found out the head of the department was on his day off, and just wanted to see how the project was coming. I told him what the issue was and what I wanted and he said the man who was to come and do the marking was in the rural areas for the day. He said to call him back and find out if he could send someone else. The head of the department said he was going to start hiding from me because I always wanted/needed something and caused him so much work. I see this as a good thing. He also said he wanted to do some construction himself while I was still around so I could help him! We called back our original contact and he suggested calling one of his workers. We called him and he came to site, looked around at what we wanted and said he needed more time to do the work than he had and would come back the next morning at 8:30 to do the work. Wednesday morning 8:30 I show up to site and surprise, surprise no on showed up. At 9 I contacted him and asked what was happening and he said he would be right there, 45 minutes later he shows up with the original man who was suppose to come and they say they can’t do the work today because they are meant to be doing inspections around the area, so can they come back tomorrow morning. I asked for a time and he said he would call me first thing in the morning, I told him if I hadn’t heard from him by 9, I’d call him. My administrative contact called and asked how it went and I told him, he was fuming, I said maybe we should just jump the line and talk to the C.E.O forget this business, we are on DAY 3, tomorrow DAY 4!!!

We haven’t had water in 4 DAYS!! This is not good, nor is it normal! But we have had ZESA or power, for the 4 days straight. However, 4pm it came back on!!! So the first thing I did was flush the toilet and take a shower! Due to the good rains, Wangie damn is full, this is what powers the east side of the country. Harare still has issues like always, so it’s nice for once to be in the bush (munda). I have a geezer, so there is piping hot water, scalding hot water, but once the tank empties that’s it, so I have to use it sparingly (showering has been a priority because it is CRAZY hot).However, my bathroom smells like an outhouse, which isn’t pleasant but like they say TIA.

I have a dog, her name is Molly and she’s 3 months old. I got her from a friend who has a farm and his female had a litter. I knew that being up in Nyanga on my own this time, I would want some company. Molly has been great company, she’s keeping me sane! She knows her name, comes when she is called and follows me EVERYWHERE! Like all puppies she chews EVERYTHING and especially enjoys my shoes and her bedding. She is currently being house broken (a challenge) and also keeping her in HER bed at night. My house has a mud room, which has her bed, and her food. So she knows that’s her place. However, spending the night there by herself is not ok. She just destroys the room, I’ve had to move things around, get things out of puppy reach and last night she cried for about an hour and then silence, she spent the whole night in there alone!!! We are making progress.

The weather is hot, well hotter than the weather I left it is also still raining mostly just drizzling in fits and spurts but there has been some heavy rain as well. It’s nice to be back in the mountains, people remember me and when I go out, people stop me and ask what I’ve been doing, why haven’t I been around and it’s nice to see me. They also say that they can see the bricks being made, and that they can see the project has started, so we are getting positive feedback.

Thank God for showers at the Amsterdam Airport!!! Well maybe I’m getting a head of myself, lets start at the beginning. Last week started out like any other week, I got up Tuesday morning to a phone message from Zimbabwe telling me I had to come back ASAP or they would need to find someone else. I had planned to go back but was trying to make a little more money to go back with but I was needed. So after I listened to the message, looked at mum and said “I need to leave now!” and I booked a ticket for the following Monday. So the week became a rush of work, buy a ticket, getting insurance, packing my bags, picking up last minute things, trying to say goodbye to as many people as I could and caught the Monday morning ferry to Vancouver for a Monday night flight! And that’s how I got to appreciate the showers at the Amsterdam Airport! The flight from Vancouver to Amsterdam in 9 hours with an 9 hour difference and a 6 hour waiting period, the flight to Nairobi is 8.5 hours with an additional 2 hour difference and a 2.5 hour waiting period and the flight to Harare is 3 hours minus 1 of the hours from Nairobi for a total flight time of 20.5 hours flying time, 10 hour time difference and a waiting time of 8.5 hours, for a grand total of 39 hours of travel! The bonus I think is that both long flights are over night flights and God has blessed me with the gift of sleeping anywhere, anytime. So not only am I clean BUT I’m not exhausted!!! It’s the little things isn’t it? And to make things sweeter I was in a row of 3 with only 2 people so I was able to use the middle seat for my legs to sleep, which is a total bonus!!! Now if only Nairobi had showers. These showers aren’t the garbage kind at roadside motels, these are nice rain showers with fantastic hot water and amazing pressure, they put most households to shame. Did I tell you about the showers? At 15 Euros everybody wins!

I was fortunate enough to get my own row on the Amsterdam to Nairobi flight, which is 8.5 hours, so I was able to sleep most of the way. From there I went I flew to Harare!

I arrived in Harare and went through passport control. What I had was to get in was an acceptance letter from immigration but not the original, a copy because I couldn’t be in the country while the visa was being processed and the acceptance letter couldn’t come to me. Passport control had to have a conference while I was waiting to decide if that was enough to let me in. My contact wasn’t picking me up and so the original letter was in Nyanga. The decided to let me through with a 7 day pass, a form to let me pick up my permit, however I wasn’t allowed to travel outside Harare. From there I went to pick up my luggage, which I am pleased to say was NOT OVER WEIGHT! Then I had to clear customs, I had nothing to declare and went through that door, I was pulled over by an officer to have my suitcases go through security as you do when you are traveling. They decided they wanted to go through both suitcases, both were emptied and everything was questions, each cd was checked, all my textbooks, my safe was opened, all pockets were checked. I brought 2 bags of used glasses to donate to an optometrist who checks peoples eyes and gives them glasses for free. The officer wanted a detailed explanation of why I had them, how much they were worth, what was going to happen them. He then wanted me to clear them with customs. So I packed up my stuff and went to the other side, where a new officer asked me to empty my suitcases AGAIN! However this time he just looked at the glasses and asked me the same questions, he looked at the glasses and said, “I don’t want these, you can take them, pack up and go”. So it all ended ok except it took me 2 hours to get to the terminal. From the airport I went to immigration to sort out my work permit. The office found my file relatively quickly but it took them an hour to re-read it and write out my permit. Luckily I was able to get it just before the office closed.

The next 2 days were spent running errands and getting reacquainted with the city and the country, readjusting to life in Zimbabwe.

I then left Saturday morning for Nyanga. I had forgotten how beautiful the drive is or how bad the roads are but I made it with a dog in tow, Molly, my new roommate to keep me company. She’s 3 months old, she half Alsatian, half mixed breed. So we arrived at our new home which is across the street from the site and I can see construction from the yard.

The house is HUGE! It’s a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house, with a covered garage, mud room, living room, dining room and kitchen. The yard is also massive, I could play a real soccer game on the side lawn! They have a fantastic porch with a brai (bbq), table and deck chairs! I feel like I should run it as a guest house.

So now to work, I met with the contractor on site and we went around and talked about issues and what’s been going on, they’ve started digging, and making bricks!! It’s starting to take shape.

Due to funding we are now creating a 1-storey library instead of 2, so I had to re-do the drawings for the building and re-calculate the foundations, footings, re-do the roof plan, and sort out another rebar schedule. I also discovered I could put wire mesh in the floor slab instead of rebar which does the same thing but it is easier because you buy it in sheets and have it sized to your needs, it is then laid in the concrete. Also because it is a 1-storey building I was able to reduce the rebar, which means less worry for me and a more guaranteed quality of rebar. So everything had to be re-worked and re-planned. This needed to be done in a span of 24 hours so we could go back to council and talk to them about the underpinning of the existing building. So we did an exploratory dig. This includes digging around the existing building at a few points to see what the foundation looks like. So we dug at 3 points the north, east and west walls. The north wall had a rock foundation with mortar to hold it together, there was no footing and the mortar was disintegrating into dust so I could scrap it out which caused holes. The foundation at the north wall was about a metre deep. The west wall had a tree root growing into the building, which was causing it to bulge, the foundation is about .75m deep and again no footings and the foundation was rock with disintegrating mortar. The southeast corner had NO FOUNDATION!!! The building was sitting on the ground and that’s it! How this building is still standing I have no idea. So the front (south end) of the building had no foundation as you moved along the east and west walls to the north end of the building the foundation gradually increased to a metre. We found that just underpinning the building was not going to be enough, when you underpin a building you do it a metre at a time so that the foundation is never fully exposed. So after the building is underpinned we’ll wrap the foundation in chicken wire to hold it all together and plaster the chicken wire to the foundation. I met with someone from council and took them to the site and showed him the foundation and my plan to fix it, he smiled, nodded and said, “Sounds good”. My biggest concern was that I would become liable for the existing building if I fixed it, which is a common practice and I didn’t want to become liable for a building I didn’t construct that is over 50 years old. I was worried about excavation of the new building without looking at the foundation of the existing building. Council wanted me to attach the existing building to the new building, which I refused to do unless I saw the existing building. We also laid out the building using pegs so I was able to see what my building is going to look like.

Tuesday this week we are having a groundbreaking ceremony. This includes important people from the Nyanga Rural Council, School Districts and Library Committee. The District Council has asked me to help inspect and train their building inspectors for this project, as they have no structural professional on staff.

So by the end of the week, we’ll have a final budget, the existing building sorted (hopefully) and a plan for construction!!!!

The Problem

The spots were dug for this exploration; 1 along the north wall, 1 along the west wall and 1 along the east wall. These spots were chosen based on the condition of the floors and walls inside and outside the building as well as the exposure they would face during excavation for the new building.

The east wall dig was done near the south wall as the south wall had an exterior crack right round through the corner column and down the side of the east wall. It’s been discovered that there is NO FOUNDATION at all. The stone that is at the bottom of the building continues down about 300mm and that’s it. The condition of the stone below dirt is that the mortar has disintegrated into dust and can be removed using your finger.

The north wall dig was done in the middle of the north wall, both columns at the north wall have cracks right down the length of them where the wall meets the column. The interior floor is cracked right across the north wall and down the east wall and where the crack meets in the corner up the interior north wall. This dig shows us there is a foundation down about 1 metre, but there is NO FOOTING. There is concrete sitting on the earth about 150, 200mm followed by a layer of mortar, which has also disintegrated into dust and can be removed with your finger, followed by rock. It is hard to tell how thick the foundation wall is at this time.

The west wall dig was done about ¾ of the way towards the north wall. This dig again showed us that there is NO FOOTING, and the foundation was about 750mm down, which shows us the depth of the foundation changes from the south wall of the building to the exterior, why this was done is undetermined, it might have been to account for the change in elevation. This is a concern because at this time we are unable to tell how the foundation changes either by stepping the foundation down OR just a diagonal slope. The foundation here is also 150 to 200mm of concrete followed with a layer of mortar and the stone. The mortar here has also disintegrated but the roots from a nearby tree have grown into the foundation and have left a hole. The stone above ground has spots of bulging and indentation, which follow the holes in the foundation, whether this is from the tree roots or the condition of the mortar is hard to tell.

The Solution

Myself along with Pat Hallows (candidate for construction) together came up with a solution. First of all the south end of the building, which appears to have no foundation needs to have some sort of foundation, we thought 500mm down and the 300mm wide under the stone already there. From there we can underpin the building doing an alternate 1m and then going back to do the alternate so that the building is never fully exposed. During excavation for the new building the north, east and west walls will be exposed and so we will wire mesh and plaster the foundation up to the bottom of the columns, which sits on a ledge. This will also deal with the stone problem as well as hold the foundation together.

I have never seen a foundation or lack thereof this bad. Pat, my contractor friend said that the building was waiting for me to save it! BUT the upside is that I am learning all sorts of problem solving and coming up with new ways to do things, which making this fun, well a version of fun anyways.

I had planned to go to Harare for the weekend, clean up some quotes on the Friday, go to the AIDS clinic on Saturday, go to church Sunday and leave after that, this being Africa that was just not going to happen. I picked up quotes on Friday, did some photocopying, printing of more drawings, talk to some new people about rebar (reinforcement bar), write up notes for some contractors. But I had to wait until Monday to meet some rebar guys, wait until Tuesday to pick up the final quotes and Wednesday I had my car serviced. In 7 months I’ve traveled 20,000 km!!! I’ve turned into my dad driving around BC when he was bishop. I can’t believe all the driving I’ve done, but my car is still plugging along and in good condition. All sorts of new things are popping up like the foundation of the old building, moving the current ZESA pole, the current septic tank location and the condition of the tank and the list goes on.

MY BUILDING GOT APPROVED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited!!! AND I’ve found my Godsend to take over for me when I leave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On Monday, I meet with ZESA the electrical people to move the electrical poles, I apply to borrow the neighbouring plot to use for builder’s sheds, I met with Pat (my Godsend) to do some exploratory digging of the existing building to see the damage to the foundations and will underpinning be enough. The cracking and floor separation that had started has become worse over the last 2 months, the concern we have that during excavation of the new building the existing building will sink further or crumble with the disruption of the earth. We are also brick making!!!

So things are coming together nicely finally after much frustration, hard work and lots of learning.

This past weekend was a mess! Friday started with the usual burning but because of the winds the fire spread and got very close to some houses including mine, most people stood around watching while some of us grabbed water and fire beaters and tried to contain it, this was also scary because we were currently in the middle of a water cut! Friday we had a windstorm, which caused trees to fall over, and power lines to come down and cut off our power for 3 days which also meant no hot water. There is no hot water in the rural areas so you boil your water to get it hot or if you are lucky you have a geezer, which we do BUT you need power to heat the water in the geezer SO no hot water. This power cut was a mixed blessing because it meant we couldn’t work and were forced to take a weekend off, which meant I read 3 books in 2 days and didn’t turn on the computer as I wanted to save the battery. Sunday morning I woke up and went into the kitchen to boil water for coffee and the kitchen was FLOODED!!! So we spent a good few hours cleaning up the water only to have the water cut!!! So we now have the power lines fixed but no water. When ZESA came to fix the power lines, they spent about 8 hours doing so, they turned on the power only to have sparks come out of the line to our house and no power. So they turned the power back off, called in a few more people and sorted out the problem. So this weekend we’ve had all sorts of disasters but have survived them all!!!

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.

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.