This week kicks off HIFA (Harare International Festival of the Arts). Embassy’s send their top acts from all over the world for a week in culture, it ranges from various kinds of music (classical, reggae, pop, jazz, opera), to various kinds of dancing (ballet, hip hop, flamenco, ballroom, African), to play’s, picture art in the National Gallery and more. The whole city shuts down for the week, people take off work and spend hundreds of dollars and for a week you forget you are in Africa, you forget that the troubles that are going on and Zimbabwe gets together and has a great time! The last 2 weeks there has been numerous national holidays, April 18^th was Independence, April 22-25^th Easter, May 2 Worker’s Day, so the construction team is off for 2 weeks. The construction team comes from all over the Nyanga area so they live on site and work in sets, 2 weeks on 5 days off. So in order to get their days off and all the holiday’s in they are off until May 1^st, so I thought I could do some work in Harare, get a change of scenery and enjoy some of HIFA. I started my HIFA extravaganza with the opening show, which I was told is the best show every year, and it was great, it’s done by the HIFA team with singing and dancing. It’s extremely political and they get away with it. A friend of mine works for HIFA and I asked how they get away with it, it turns out since the festival is supported by all the embassy’s and brings in HUGE revenues HIFA can pretty much do what they want. They are also very good at being subtle or at least not standing on a soap box preaching about the government, they use music, singing and dancing to do the job. My second show was from the Irish Embassy, a traditional band called Kila, very good, really entertaining and just a good time. The next night I was given a complimentary ticket for the opera gala. This was unbelievable, it was snippets of various operas from “The Marriage of Figaro” to “The Magic Flute” to a whole bunch of German operas I’ve never heard of before. It was done by the Britain’s Embassy with help from the local opera choir. It was really nice. Finally on Friday I went and saw the Zimbabwean National Ballet do a mix of ballet, jazz, contemporary, hip hop and tap. The company is mostly white, which surprised me it was a bit disappointing, there were 2 or 3 that were fantastic but only out of a dozen or so.

Currently the manual brick press is making 100 bricks a day, which is nowhere near where I thought it was going to be. I talked to the “professionals” in South Africa and they said we should be making 4-500 a day? So we went over the system on the phone and found a few places we could speed things up but it wouldn’t slow us down that much. So the contractor and I had a light bulb idea, what if we put a hydraulic system onto the manual system to speed up the process AND it would make the brick press both manual AND hydraulic to make it more versatile. The contractor asked a farmer if we could borrow their hydraulic brick press to try our idea. We could easily remove the hydraulics and replace them at a later time. This got complicated because we thought we had it sorted and the farmer decided that if the new system worked she wanted the new system and it just became ridiculous SO I had another light bulb idea, what if we found someone to fabricate the hydraulic system for us from scratch especially for our machine and just cut out the middle man, AND I asked around AND my colleague and local contact in Nyanga knew someone in Harare, who specializes in custom made brick presses so tada!!!! I fixed the problem, maybe on the phone it sounded very promising, we’ll see what happens in person when I met him. After meeting him I am really excited, his work shop was unbelievable, the innovation of his machines was incredible. He had created a machine that you put all your rusty nails, brackets and such in turn it on and it cleans them without chemicals or water it was amazing. You dream it, he can build it or he can dream it and build it. So he’s coming up to Nyanga and look at the machine, watch the guys use the machine and see what he can come up with, he’s my kind of person!!!

We HAD liftoff on April 7^th for a few mere moments until someone had an idea to change the plan. Instead of going larger and do add-on’s like the offices and conference room that were never part of the original idea. So why not do just the library and lay it out so that in future the rest could be added. It then would become an incentive for the community to use the library and show that more investing in the community would be a worthwhile project. So we made the library bigger and got rid of the rest and sent it to the contractor. THEN I hear from the contractor that the materials are bought and paid for and we’ve paid for the area of the original building, which would’ve been helpful knowledge back when we had the original building that didn’t quite fit and I would’ve made it fit!!!! So now I went back to the original plan and did some CPR. Now I have the original building with some changes, AND I suggested that we kit out the library and leave the rest, explain we are doing what we originally agreed to and the community needs to kit out the offices and conference room by donation or fundraising or whatever, but then they take responsibility for the building. So it’s been a week of back and forth and I feel like nothing has been accomplished. But it’s not just about the drawings I seem to be doing many jobs and spend the day doing various things and accomplish little in various areas and not making any big strides in fewer areas.

MY DAY

5:30am. Up to let Molly out

6am. Clean up her room, make her breakfast, she eats, I shower, eat and get ready for the day

7am. The phone starts to ring, usually calls from the contractor with the days events, my local colleague with the days events, my job to fit it all in

8am. Collect emails and send emails from the evening before

9am. Site meeting

10am. Deal with morning emails

11am. Start working on drawings

12pm. Lunch

1pm. Work on various things that have come up in the morning, currently that’s game plan and ideas and furniture for the interior of the building

4pm. Write out new emails and send them out

5pm. Check in with local colleague for any updates or issues

6pm. Dinner

7pm. More drawings and dealing with afternoon emails

9pm. Let out Molly for the last time and put her to bed and a little r and r

10pm. Bed.

Lots of this depends on ZESA, which recently has cut out at the WORST times and obviously causes things to take longer like cooking. Now you may wonder where do domestic duties come in, well along with my house came domestic help a fantastic person named Jonathan who has become my saving grace, I would never have clean dishes, laundry and my house would look like a frat house if it wasn’t for him. The yard would look like a jungle. My other saving grace is coffee, I know this sounds bad but it makes me happy and it keeps me going plus I don’t think it’s as potent as Canadian coffee because I can drink 5 cups a day and have no issues sleeping, although to be fair sleeping has never been an issue for me and I guess with working like I do, sleeping comes easy. This coming weekend is a long weekend due to Independence Day. 31 years ago on April 18^th Zimbabwe became a “free nation”. A little piece of trivia for you, Robert Mugabe was not the first Shona president of Zimbabwe a man named Canaan Banana was, that’s right President Banana was the leader of Zimbabwe at Independence, there isn’t much out there about him and he’s not talked about and I’m sure if you asked a ZANU PF person they would say it’s always been Mugabe.

Late yesterday good news came my way. A decision was made that the original plan with sections moved around in order to fit was the way to go. The building area and materials used would remain the same. It took a slightly different shape but it will work!!!! So now construction digging has started full swing with no turning back and I can finally do the drawings full out without any changes. A huge weight has been lifted and we’re back on track.

Lots has been going on the last week. I went to Harare for my month visit. I help out at an AIDS clinic and get my monthly supplies. We are now starting to work on the interior of the building, which for various reasons should have happened sooner and later. So I’m in the midst of looking for furniture, computer hardware and software, the works! So I started at this ikea kind of place called OK Mart and then found an agent to do the work for me, I just give him the list and he sorts it all out! Plus this agent could also handle the zambulance situation, which I will explain later. Anyways I also went to get the test results from the brick testing we had done and it was not good. The tests should have showed at out of necessary 8MPa (mega Pascal, how compression is measured) we by law require an 8, we acquired a 1.65. Now I know what you are thinking, we didn’t just fail we tanked, our bricks are 20% of the mandatory requirement where did we go wrong? Well this is what I asked myself for the next 3 hours. I went over the math of the mix, the mixing process, the labour, the machine and on and on. When I went to drop off the bricks to be tested, I like an organized, efficient individual called ahead and got a quote and name and all the requirements necessary for the bricks to be tested. So when I showed up, the man who does the testing explained to me that the price I was quoted was to small and $60 per 10 bricks was not enough, they now wanted $210 per 10. So after negotiations and talking to the manager of the department I got my original price. So if the tests showed a failure I’d have to come back and do it again and then they can charge whatever they want and my hands are tied. I’ve talked to a few people, in the industry and people who’ve done projects here and this may be an actual probability. It never occurred to me this would be the case, I looked at myself and what we were doing, not anything someone else would do. I am still looking at those things and we are changing some of the variables and trying some things to see if that improves things, we also broke one ourselves to see what happened and it didn’t look horrible and it broke really nicely and the 3 of us there all professionals were impressed. So we’ll see what we can do, we are also looking at finding another place to use for testing like the Construction Association of Zimbabwe, which works for the industry. Another thought we had is to mix a hydraulic brick press with the Bamba brick press. The size, design and make of the brick press with the power of creation of the hydraulics. This will speed up the manual process which is taking too long and might be a reason the bricks aren’t tough enough (if in fact they are).

Now on to the zambulance as I promised. A zambulance is a bed attached to a bicycle and used as an ambulance. The zambulance has a cover over the bed to provide weather protection, privacy and ventilation. But there are some design flaws, improvements and new ideas to come to this amazing invention and I’m working on it. What gets me everytime is putting one of these is a rural area means a little old lady in desperate need of medical can be put into a zambulance and taking to a clinic or a hospital or where ever she needs to go and won’t die or become chronic or permanently ill because of something that could easily be fixed. Or a pregnant woman having complications can be taken to hospital and not risk herself or the baby. This is why I’m here to help a community with little to no resources improve by giving them the resources to do it.

And that in a nutshell has been my last week, which is still going and more gets added to the list but that’s why I said we’d do this in 6 months and not 4 because nothing runs smoothing, things will go wrong and do go wrong but it’s all in the learning and it would be boring if it was all smooth sailing.

The good news is TODAY, APRIL 7TH, 2011 they started excavation for foundations! We have lift off.

I go grocery shopping once a month. One big shop then I don’t have to worry about making sure I get into town or running out. I seem to have a good idea of what is needed in a month. So it is now at the end of the month and there are veggies left in the fridge that are on their last leg and need to be used so I have come up with an idea called “Left over chili”. Left over chili is the usual ground beef, tomato sauce, beans’n sauce and all the left over veg in my fridge. It turned out really well although there was an unimaginable amount of green string beans and carrots, but now I have loads of iron and good night vision!

ZESA for the first time this evening went out for a usual 4.5 hour stint. 5pm it went out, 9:30 it came back. Luckily for the first hour I was in a meeting, then I was able to work until my computer battery died, then I made dinner on the propane tank.

My “To Do” list is now numbered and the numbers are distributed evenly among the days. Lots of the numbers span over a few days and some I think will never get ticked off the list, it also doesn’t help that the list keeps getting longer!!!

We are now working on the game plan of what’s going on inside the building. The various ideas are becoming more concrete and various competitions to decorate the building. This should have been done before the building was designed but here in Zimbabwe things happen differently. I’m surprised I’m the one putting together this game plan, but it’s been good experience and interesting.

Another new thing we thought to try is mixing our Bamba brick system with a Hydraform. The design and strength of the Bamba system with the ease of construction of the Hydraform to create an iron brick that you can turn out 1000 a day versus the 100 a day with just the Bamba. The Hydraform usually doesn’t include cement in the mix and doesn’t provide the interlocking system of Bamba. So we’ll see what turns out. One small step for Meredith, one GIANT step for the construction brick making community.

I’m listening to classical music while trying to fix the library plans AGAIN! Finally after 2 weeks of daily conversations with different Council members in the construction department and mini visits to site where they walk around but don’t do anything, yesterday they FINALLY put in the pegs. However, the pegs they put in were not at the original location. The previous pegs, were not permanent and have since disappeared. The new pegs are permanent but not the location of the last pegs, so my site changed in all the wrong places. So I had to re-draw the site plan AND try to design a building that fits into the space. So I’m very lucky that ZESA (power) has decided to stick around so I can do all these drawings. Then having to talk to various people to get their input and opinions and doing different options to see what different things look like, it’s almost like starting from scratch. I thought we had this all sorted but I guess that’s not the case. I was going to ask for a variance to encroach on the boundary line by 500mm but it would take until June when all of Council has their quarterly meeting to get approved and we can’t wait that long. So we make the changes and send Council the amendments package, which they won’t read but approve, which is fine with me. The head of the construction department yesterday told me after he finished the pegging that he didn’t want to see me until the job was done. I laughed and said I would see him when I needed his help.

We continue to come up with new ideas for the resource center and all the things it could be used for and what we want in it. A big thing is that there is nothing to do here in Nyanga, if you want to go out, meet friends, whatever there is no movie theatre, no coffee shop, no take out, if you want to eat out, you go to one of the hotel or resorts in the area. We are thinking of ways to keep people entertained, out of trouble and something to keep them stimulated and something unique. The existing library is to be used for conferences, meetings, etc. but what about when there isn’t any. We wondered about making it a art gallery. There is currently a wee bathroom with a storage room around it that we are thinking of converting into a kitchen or even better a small canteen or coffee stall. From there sandwich’s, coffee, snacks whatever could be sold, bring your computer, look at some art and it’s a cooler version of Starbucks! It also means that people in the library don’t have to leave to eat. There isn’t anything like this in the area. If I was a student from 100km down the dirt road and I came on a Saturday for the library and computer room, I’d like to eat and have coffee. Also we thought of maybe having a big backdrop or screen to show movies, both educational and entertainment and then during meetings or conferences you could plug your computer in and run a slide show. This would give Nyanga a social life or weekend life outside of drinking and just hanging out in the bush doing nothing. This is one of the exciting parts of my job that I enjoy. We also thought of having the students paint inside the children’s area and part of the outside of building like a mural to give it a unique look to it, plus if students from all 70 schools were involved it would add to the community of the building

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.