We found the answer to the trouble with the 2mm difference on the brick height. There is a king pin or roller pin that is on the arm that compresses the bricks. This roller is what keeps the lid down and holds everything together. 1 side of the pin was so warn it wasn’t rolling anymore and wasn’t compressing its side of the lid. We had a new one made and installed and TA DA the bricks are now even!!!! So I’ve been going randomly during the day and measuring bricks to check size and consistency and so far so good. The foundation is still slow and they are still working on the west side but now that they know what they are doing, there is now a rhythm and moving at a steady pace. We are still dealing with rebar issues but I am hoping tomorrow or Friday IT WILL BE SORTED! A shipment of science equipment, textbooks, reference books and wait for it… LIBRARY BOOKS came in from the UK. A brilliant NGO called School AID sent a shipment from schools across the country. My job was to go through the books and sort them and find out what was there. There was everything from reference books, to encyclopedia’s to children’s novels, readers, classics like Bronte and Jane Austen and every John Grisham book ever written. Some of them I started flipping through and got caught up reading them, this was an issue for me when I worked in the public library and had to put books back on shelves, I get caught up in books that an hour would pass and someone would come looking for me thinking I had died, blame it on my parents and their love of reading. So now we have to finish the library so we can put these books on shelves and out to the public. It was a good day!!!

So the cost of food has gone up in Zimbabwe, which is hard as people’s wages haven’t/ have gone up. The NEC has increased the wage 17.65% across the board, but this doesn’t work for beggars, guys who sell goes on the road, in the parking lots and domestic staff. This is for the “workforce”. But a litre of juice is $2.50, a litre of milk is $1.50 and veggies have just gone up. So my drink repertoire now consists of coffee and water. My veggie intake in Canada has always been great, I’m a huge fan of salad and at university had 1 a day as well as a veggie with dinner. Here in Zimbabwe with ZESA cuts veggies last a week. Since I grocery shop once a month living in a rural area my veggie intake happens at the beginning of the month, I freeze a few veggies for the end of the month for my left over chili the last 4 days of the month. Luckily this month ZESA has been a bit better then usual, why I don’t ask I am just thankful so my veggies have lasted 2 weeks. The network (phone and internet) has been horrid with the weather (rain, grey sky, clouds, and VERY WINDY) and I’m from BC so I know windy. It’s actually a miracle that we’ve had power but satellites and cables and all that communication technical stuff has just been non-existent.

I spent part of the morning on site meeting with the contractor dealing with issues like the drainage, rebar and windows. So my rebar issue is now SOLVED!! But we now just need to make it work with the budget, that’s a lot harder then it sounds trust me. There is a reason I didn’t become an accountant but maybe I should’ve taken some classes. This is also the reason that companies have many people on a project, each with their own specialty, which makes sense. I just keep telling myself this is ALL LEARNING!

This week in construction has been interesting. We’ve had some issues with reinforcement, the brick machine and brick layout. Some of the reinforcement was never purchased so I’m trying to re-working an alternative and succeeding!!! The brick machine is having some technical issues. Before we started using the machine, it was sitting in the shed of a school in the bush for years. So it hasn’t been used until we started, we did do general maintenance but one of the main pins that controls the arm that presses the lid to make the brick is wearing away and not compressing the brick as much as it should be causing a 2mm difference in the brick. This might sound like a very small margin BUT if the brick isn’t even everywhere then the bricks don’t lock like they are suppose to and we get a lopsided building. Think of a 2.5m high wall, each brick is 180mm high divide 2.5m by 180mm is almost 14 bricks multiply that by 2mm is 28mm, which is a lopsided building. So we’re trying to sort that out and get the machine back to perfection. The brick manual suggests a way to lay bricks for a single wall. The foundation is a double wall and that layout doesn’t work as it creates 2 single walls, which wobble badly, so we tested 2 different ways to interlock 2 walls and TA DA we succeeded. This is the part I enjoy, finding new, creative, and different ways to do things. The way we decided on is MUCH better and is working well. So this brick system is a learning curve for all of us. The technology is old but none of us has any experience with it. The guess and test and experimentation has caused the project to slow down while we figure it out and try all these different ways, we seem to be on a rhythm and it’s slower than we had planned but we are now “cooking with gas” as they say.

So I went to Harare for the weekend as friends of mine are leaving Harare. I was driving from Nyanga to Rusape and was about 16k’s from Rusape when I smelled smoke. Winter is also called fire season as forest fires are set for various reasons. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw smoke coming from the rear light that turns on when the trunk is opened and then… it caught fire, FIRE! So I pulled over and turned off the car, opened the trunk and pulled out my fire extinguisher. It’s traffic law that all cars must have 2 hazard triangles, reflector vest AND a fire extinguisher. It’s the time I wanted to praise the traffic department. I used my fire extinguisher and put out the fire. I then saw smoke coming out the front of the car, not the hood but inside out of the wheel and console, I sprayed the front with a fire extinguisher incase the smoke was leading to a fire. After everything was as aired out as I could get it, I tried to start the car and NOTHING! Then I realized my hazards weren’t on anymore the whole electrical system in the car was shot. I started think about what my options were, luckily I had cell service and called Willie, my colleague in Nyanga and asked him if he knew of anyone in Rusape who could help me. I also called a friend from Harare who was in Marondera for the Bernard Mezeki day, which I was suppose to go to, to also ask if he knew of anyone in Rusape I could use. Willie like a champ came through and 2 hours later I was in Rusape having my car towed to a garage that specializes in auto electrics. While I was waiting for the tow, the mechanic called to ask me questions about my car, the make, model, standard or automatic, fuel injection or carburetor, etc, etc and luckily I knew the answers to all. When he arrived he praised me for actually knowing and getting those questions right. I explained my dad taught me about cars and got me interested in cars not only in real life but by watching James Bond movies. So once I got to Rusape reality sunk in about what really happened and what was I going to do. Rusape is like getting stuck in Hazelton, BC for those of you who don’t know, Hazelton is 45 minutes away from Smithers, BC and is one of those places with a gas station, a grocery store and a Motel 6, if you blink while driving through it, you miss it. What was going to be able to be done about my car in Rusape. He pulled my car apart looking at the electrics from back to the battery in front. The mechanic was surprised the battery was still in tact. It had turned itself off when wires were going nuts, when it should’ve caught fire and blown up, I’m very grateful it didn’t blow up and very lucky. So he took out the burnt wires, there were more than 1 as the 1 that started it was next to other wires, which were starting to melt, so 3 wires were damaged. He fixed 2 wires but left the 3rd, the original out. My friend in Marondera took public transport to Rusape to make sure I was ok, to make sure the car was ok and to make sure I wasn’t being hustled by the mechanic and he actually did the work. So the mechanic said he had fixed the important parts but I would need to come back on Monday for him to finish the job. He needed a part he didn’t have so I had to pick up a part in Harare, luckily my friend was there with me so I had some backup incase anything else happened, which it didn’t!!!!

Monday I came back to Rusape and he looked at the fuse box, which is plastic, which seems really dumb to me as fuses are metal. Anyways the fuse to the rear trunk light was melted into the fuse box and 3 other fuses were starting to melt. He was able to put in a new fuse that was melted in a different location of the car until the fuse box could be taken out and properly sorted out and he put in a new wire so I had an overhead light when I opened my car doors. So my car is driving well now, no light issues and no smoke or fire. But I’ll have to have the fuse box removed and sorted in the near future. I also need the roof of my car re-upholstered as it is burnt and falling off.

Work is going well, that’s my good news!!! The construction workers are learning how to use the bricks and foundation is coming together. We are dealing with a few blips like lack of materials bought, therefore coming up with creative designing off the cuff, construction worker communication, budget issues, which are always a good time but I go to site a few times a day and spend some time learning, walking around, seeing the project come together, talking to the brick makers and construction workers.

I spent the last week in absolute bliss! I was offered an opportunity to go to Mana Pools (pronounced marna), which is the Shona word for 4. So there are 4 pools, well kind of, it’s part of the Zambezi that runs between Zambia and Zimbabwe. This is real camping with tents and metal food containers and fire cooking the works! So we stayed at a secluded camp the closest neighbour we had was a mile away we never saw them, heard them or saw lights, occasional we saw their vehicle. What really impressed me was that the friends I went with, the husband is a vet, which is really helpful living with animals in the bush BUT his son is a professional guide. I was exposed to all sorts of things I never would’ve seen, heard, or known otherwise.

For instance elephants have 6 sets of teeth over the lifetime, the set grows in at the front and moves slowly towards the back of their mouth then fall out as a new set grows in, an elephant life is determined on how long their teeth last, an elephant can live up to 80 years but in places like Mana that are sandy, it causes their teeth the sand down faster, going through the 6 sets faster and thus ending life. I also learned that some elephants are born without tusks. Female lions lead the hunt and kill the prey, the males are last in the pride and once a kill has been made he takes over and gets first bite. Hippos kill more humans than any other animal in Africa! Crocodiles eat once a year unless the kill is easy and available and they only kill in deep waters where they are comfortable and as they also drown their prey to kill it. I learned much more but I’ll get on with the interesting stuff.

Brian, the guide brought a shower, that’s right, a shower. I thought I’d have to bathe in a bucket or in the river or something, don’t laugh I HAVE NEVER BEEN CAMPING AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I WAS GETTING INTO. I did have an overnight test run but showering was never an issue. He hooked up a bag with a shower nozzle onto a tree and put up a canvas wall using poles around 3 sides of the shower to create a little room with an open wall that was open to the wildlife. I was told the bathroom was a hole in the ground called a long drop, I got out there and PRAISE THE LORD there was a toilet seat on top so I didn’t have to squat just hover, so basically it was an outhouse.

We went on game drives at various times of the day because you see different things at different times. There are day animals and night animals, 2 complete sets of wildlife, it’s funny to watch the day animals at about 5 or 6 they all leave what they are doing and go home to their trees or dens or whatever like they’re coming home from work. Hippos live in the water, however at night they come out of the water to eat on land, all day and all night you can hear them talking, laughing, burping all sorts going on, I wished I could’ve taped them, it was really funny. At night they would walk through our campsite and you could hear them blump, blump, blump. Hyenas would also come through the site, I never saw them but you could see their footprints in the morning. Baboons are you’re biggest issue during the day, that’s why you lock up EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING and keep your tent closed. During games drives I saw a pride of lions on the hunt, it was amazing and incredible, and how they didn’t even care we were there they just kept going to attack a family of warthogs. It’s not the kill that’s interesting it’s watching them work, the planning, and the timing. We saw painted dogs on a hunt of impala, painted dogs are wild dogs that kind of look like hyenas. The pack was small only 3 and one was lame, they killed an impala but lions got wind of it and scared them off to eat it themselves. We saw loads of elephants; one came daily to eat the bark off a tree at our campsite. One night we were up later than usual and heard a noise in the bush I walked behind Brian as he checked it out and… it was a leopard!!!! It was amazing these green eyes staring back at us and it turns out lions and leopards and any cat really are very skittish animals, unlike hyenas or painted dogs they retreat around humans as a first instinct, so it was a short visit but non the less I SAW A LEOPARD! The only animal I wasn’t able to see first hand was a hyena, oh well next time ☺

Part of constructing a building is “desigining” the inside of the building, the game plan what’s going to happen once the building is built, the resources and such that are going to happen. Part of the inside plan is to have a social outlet, place for people to go instead of the pub (The Village Inn, Troutbeck, Claremont, Mount Clare). There are no movie theatres, coffee shops, place to eat out (except the pubs). This was my suggestion as someone who lives in the village, alone I understand what it’s like. This is one of a few reasons I go to the city for HUMAN CONTACT! I work at home, live at home and spend my nights at home. I am 1 of 5 white people in Nyanga, the other 4 are senior citizens, not that I don’t spend time with them BUT someone my age is 30 minutes away and they have a new born baby. Once a week I get together with friends in the area but in 7 days that’s not much. I also stick out here, everyone knows who I am and where I live, I walk into the village and get hello’s from everyone which is nice to be a part of the community but I like being 1 of a million that no one looks at instead of 1 of 5. I also have talked to others my age in the community and asked what they want most common is a place to go out. One friend goes to Troutbeck on Sunday afternoons for tea just to get out, she’s the district manager of a bank who moved out here in February. She goes to Harare every chance she gets just to have some social contact, this needs to change, especially with the youth as the alternative is becoming politically involved, which is a huge issue out here, friends, family, connections to be involved with the army and ZANPF. Thank goodness for my dogs, that’s right dogs, with an s I got another one, a male, Huck. He was found by a friend on the side of the road, she had him vaccinated and took him to Friends of Animals Foundation, like SPCA, which they also have here but they do something different. FAF keeps him for 2 weeks to see if someone collects him if not he’s open game. There are so many puppies that are not claimed or not adopted and more animals then they can take on, lots are put down. So I took one in, partially as a favor to a friend, partially as it was a sign, partially as he was the only dog Molly didn’t bark at and finally so Molly would have a friend. Huck has shown me how far Molly has come, and how much having 2 dogs makes a positive difference. Huck is 3.5 months old, 2 months younger than Molly and about an inch smaller than here. He’s furry and going to be HUGE and a face almost like a St. Bernard, no one is sure of his breed, I’m told mix with lots of big dogs in the mix.

Monday came around and I went to Council to see what the latest on the drawings was, feeling a bit nauseous thinking what’s the latest snag we’ll hit today. Got there and the drawings had been approved but the application to waive fees had been denied, so I had to find the money to pay for the drawings so they could be stamped so I can continue construction. The money man, Willie is in South Africa so between emails and phone calls we are sorting out the money so that I can pay for the drawings so I can continue construction, thankfully zesa has been accommodating and emailing has not been an issue.

My luck is just garbage!! So I went to pay for the drawing submission, which we failed to get waived. So I went in to find out how much we owed. I was told to come back at 3pm to get the letter of reply explaining why we didn’t get the fee waived. I came back at 3pm with the money and they hadn’t written the letter so I said I wouldn’t pay them until I had the letter so they said they’d get on it and I could wait 90 minutes later, the slowest typist I’ve EVER MET! Slugs type faster it was ridiculous for 3 lines, an address and a signature I waited 90 minutes! So I paid the fee and took the receipt to collect the drawings and it turns out they didn’t charge us for the health appraisal, I asked if they could still give me the drawings and I would bring the money in the morning so we could continue with construction and found out, wait for it… THE DRAWINGS HAVE NOT BEEN APPROVED! They have not been checked, stamped or signed, I thought we dealt with this on Friday when Willie went it guns blazing and asked what the issue was and was told everything was in order, apparently not. So tomorrow will be another day of surprises and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Today was a day of surprises, I went and paid the health appraisal and saw the secretary’s eyes pop out of his head and the running around that followed as he saw me and realized he hadn’t had the drawings approved!!! He promised if I came back at 2:30 he would have it sorted. I came back at 2:40 and…THE DRAWINGS WERE SIGNED, SEALED AND DELIEVERED! We are now back in business. In order to cover ourselves the inspector is coming back out tomorrow morning 8am to re-check the excavation, which will be fine as he originally thought he was checking it for a 2 storey building so pouring of footings begins tomorrow and all is right with the world WOO HOO!!!!! I will be celebrating by chilling out at home eating chili and watching a movie with my dogs Molly and Huck.

I went on my first outdoor camping with a tent experience EVER on Saturday. The Vumba also known as Honde Valley is a shaped like a bowl and traps in the heat. It’s known for it’s coffee, tea, bananas, mangos, lemons and avocadoes. You can get 100 bananas for $1! Friends of mine have bought a plot of land, out there, which is considered hard to come by and people kill for. It cost him $90 for the land and only $40 of it was for the actual property the rest was to the Chief, the King, the king’s wife, the assistant who took him around, the man who sold him the land and the Council. He has a year to put a building on the land, any building it can be a toilet, a round hut anything as long as there is something built otherwise it goes back to the Council and someone else can buy it. I learned how to pitch a tent, which was easier than I thought it was going to be. When we got to the land there was a goat tied to a tree, which became dinner!!! We only had the meat from the goat but I was told that if you wrap the intestine around the stomach and cook it on a spit over the day it’s a delicacy and really tasty. I was happy we didn’t have time to cook the intestine while we were there as that was a bit more than I was willing to do.

The project is at a bit of a standstill, Council is dragging their heels about re-approving our drawings now that the building is single storey. By law Council has 3 days to approve drawings but we are now at a week. Council was at a conference Thursday and Friday last week, this Wednesday was Africa Day and on and on. I am told today Thursday I can pick up the drawings at 4pm. This causes an issue as the construction team is not able to continue to work and time is being wasted!! But we hope for the best and I hope to get good news by the end of the day.

The construction team is putting the rebar or reinforcement bar together, which they have laid out in the excavated foundations, I went to take a look and check it out and it looks awesome!!! It’s really cool to see designs take shape and to see what the drawings, the math and all the years of school look like in the practical.

I went to see the head of the department of construction and he wanted me to wait 15 minutes while he looked at the drawings I wasn’t sure what 15 minutes was going to accomplish. Then he called me into his office and asked questions and made changes. This time it seems to be harder then when we put the drawings in the first time for approval! When you submit drawings you submit 4 sets, 2 for the Council, 2 for site if you want extra drawings anywhere then you submit those as well. Originally we submitted 5, 2 for them, 2 for us., 1 for me The contractor has 1 not signed by Council, which is allowed but can’t be used for construction, which he used for reference as his team had 2 onsite. I did the 4 for the library amendments as Council needs only to keep 2. When I went in this afternoon, the head of department asked me for the original drawings so he could compare them to the changes, I wanted to scream he should’ve done that before I came to collect the signed copies but also he has reminded me numerous times why Council needs 2 copies so he should have 2 sets to use and should be able to get them without asking me for some. So now I will give Council 1, site 2 and me 1 since Council can’t seem to keep the drawings they have and I am more reliable. Me being my perfectionist, work control freak self, I have a signed copy for myself, which I will bring to tomorrows meeting incase he can’t find his, which is most likely as Council is the most disorganized place I’ve been to in the government sector!!!

I went to the Council’s office Friday morning to find out…wait for it… that the original drawings weren’t approved!! They were signed but not stamped, when we submitted the drawings we also submitted an application to have the fees waived as this is a community building, this was September of last year and we were told that it would have to go through full council for a decision. There have been 2 full council sessions since then and no decision about the waiver. So I was told I’d have to wait until Monday for the head of the department to talk to the CEO of Council to ask where to go from here as we were constructing a building that technically hadn’t been approved. I had numerous questions like How did they do an inspection if the building wasn’t approved or tell us to go ahead with construction or tell us to send in changes after the building site had changed. I wanted to just yell and say all sorts of non-helpful things but I figured that wouldn’t help me at all, so instead I went to my local guy and my savior when it comes to all things work related in Zimbabwe, Willie. I went to Willie and explained the new development as he gets daily updates from me, and he was not impressed. He drove to Council during the full council meeting and pulled the head of the department out of the meeting and gave him a what for YEAH!!!! MY HERO!!! I was so proud and impressed, he asked what all the questions were about, did we miss something, what did he want. He said everything was fine and no problems he just needed to find out what to do about the drawings that weren’t approved and how to get the application waivers sorted. So 8am Monday morning I am to pick up approved drawings with no hiccups and application waivers ALL OF THEM approved and sorted. I was also concerned if they had missed our first application with 2 full councils what about the applications that were suppose to be checked during this full council!!!!

So we’ll just have wait and see what happens on Monday, although Willie is amazing I’ll believe it when Council hands me the drawings!!!!!

The last 2 weeks have been a bit scattered. I spent Easter and the following week in Harare for HIFA, which was great, however I ended up spending another week in Harare for the car. I went to pick up a friend from the airport and noticed a horrible noise the car was making. I was like something was going to fall out the bottom of the car and I could feel it in the pedals. So I called the mechanic who comes to pick up your car from wherever you are. He took it for a test drive around the block brought it back and said that it had to be towed, it wasn’t safe to drive, OOPS! So he had the car for about 10 days turns out the fan belt was destroyed as well as the tensoner, he took the suspension apart as well as I had told him I had some work done on the shocks, boots and cv joints and the shocks we sliding around and 2 of the 4 boots needed to be replaced. So I also asked for it to be serviced. Grant is who usually looks after my car, he’s good at explaining things and showing me in the car what’s wrong, he also gives me all the parts he took out and shows why they needed to be replaced. So after 2 weeks of the city I came home to Nyanga yesterday, I noticed a HUGE difference driving the car back. The last weekend I was in Harare my old roommate who now lives in Harare whom I was staying with suggested I go with her to Kariba for a break. The car’s in the shop and you need some r’n r was her rational. So I agreed. Kariba is damn that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe along the Zambezi if you go farther up the Zambezi you reach Victoria Falls. It’s not very populated and there isn’t much there but the bush. There are lodges and cabins that range from rustic to The Ritz, and by rustic I mean rustic. We were somewhere in the middle, a small cottage on the lake where the hippos came onto the front lawn to eat the grass, I could open my widows and watch them. The zebras would lay in the yards in herds and just sleep or sun bathe. When the hippos come out at night you are suppose to stay indoors as they can very vicious and can easily kill, but we just stood in the door way and they didn’t take any notice. Hippos eat 40kg of grass a day, which surprised me as I didn’t see 40kg’s worth of grass anywhere much less feed the dozen that were there. There were also crocodiles but they stayed in the lake, which is a good thing as well as loads and loads of birds. There are several little islands in the lake, one called Starvation island, which during the low season animals go out there for food but there isn’t any and they stay too long looking and when the water rises they get stuck out there and starve. In 1977 Operation Noah took place to rescue all the animals off the islands back to the main land so they could eat, some mother’s of animals killed their young to save them as they didn’t understand what was going on, everyone once in a while still today small rescues are done. Kariba is very hot, one of the hottest places in Zimbabwe but as we are heading into winter I found it as hot as the rest of Zimbabwe is during the summer plus there was a breeze.

The good news, no GREAT news is that excavations are finished AND site inspection was approved!!!!! I didn’t have any doubts about the quality of work or if it was right but I did have concerns on how long it would take to get the inspector to site and if he would want a bribe to pass us BUT it was all fine and we are now moving on to the pouring of footings, rebar and foundations.