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Week Six's Work is Complete

There really isn't a dull moment. Well to be honest there are a few dull moments, but these don't happen that much.

The week started with yet more men and women workers. Actually, many of the new workers are young. There is a lot of clearing of grass and top soil before the digging begins:

We placed an order with a company in Kenya to make three block presses. They manufactered them very quickly and flew them into Bujumbura airport within three weeks of the order. However, when we went to pick them up we had a about a day and a half of negotiations just to let us remove them from the airport. Much patience is needed in Africa as things don't happen the way you would expect. However by Tuesday late afternoon we had managed to transport them to our site:

This is not an African version of coke but a test with the red earth to see what it contains. Earth and water, Shaken not Stirred.

I reckon that African women (Abakobga) would make good rugby players as their necks must be muscularly well developed. For the record I would just like to say that I didn't personally take any of the following photos of the young women but I did ask my 11 year old son Matthew to take them for me. He He... Actually I tried but they were so embraced that they immediately looked away with embarrassment giggling as only young girls can do. You may be interested to know that these buckets are full of freshly made wet concrete:

The red earth will be used, along with cement,  to make the compressed blocks so we needed away to sieve the earth. The timber from the block press crates and some mesh from the market was used to create a large sieve.

As the container will be here soon we have put in some concrete supports that are well above the ground level in case it should flood:

Here is one of the big block presses that will be used for the houses main walls. It is open and ready for the red earth and cement mix:

Once the earth has been compressed here is what you get:

The foundation walls are steadily progressing for all the other remaining houses:

Some of the local kids climbed a tree to what was happening on site:

Here is one of the other block presses being tested. These blocks, unlike the other press are smaller and don't interlock:

This very large hole is for one of the four main septic tanks that we will have to build. Africans know how to deal with naughty children. A couple of kids out side the fence insisted on digging small holes in the fence to see through. The site supervisor had enough and caught them, put them in the hole and when their mother came looking for them she was none to happy with the children's behavior:

The three block presses stored away in the small container:

This picture is of a building which I have been watching going up on the road that leads to our house. There are so may things that disturb me about this building. Today I discovered that the building right next to this building collapsed in the night:

Here is the building that collapsed in the night before the building was complete. This is three stories high and apparently and amazingly no one was killed or injured.

On a lighter note. Here are a couple of pictures with the kids that want to see what is happening on the site.