Print

[ccarr]

Week Seven's Work is Complete

As normal, progress on site has been excellent, however I won't give you so many images of concrete and sticks but will introduce you to other projects that we have been helping out with along with some random images of interest.



The Hope Centre Building Site:

This week we employed two new Burundians, one male and one female, to assist in the manufacturing of the compressed blocks. The woman is not visible in these images however her job is to sieve the red earth then use buckets to mix cement, red earth and water to the right consistency.  Meanwhile the man prepares the block press by washing and oiling as necessary. He inserts the earth mix and compresses the block. The woman then removes the block and places on the ground and immediately covers with plastic. The block is not touched for 24 hours where after the blocks are watered morning and evening for seven days. The blocks can be stacked after 3 days but not used for at least 14 days. This will give us plenty of time for when we will need them.

This week they have managed to make about 470 blocks but next week we are expecting this to rise:

Work on the septic tank and soak-away are also going well but just as the soak-away was going to be filled in with large rocks all the water to Gatumba was cut off. Thankfully the soak away had been dug down well below the water table allowing water to be retrieved for making the concrete. The hole was eventually filled with rocks.

Water for the New Clinic/Dispensary at Rutana:

The following images were taken on a two day trip that, we as a family, made to a remote area in Rutana. The area is called Nyembuye and is located 175 Kilometres to the east of where we now live in Bujumbura.

A local voluntary peace and reconciliation organisation called REMA have been a great help to us as a family and also to Mission International in providing support when we have needed it the most. One of Rema's projects has been to build a dispensary/clinic in a Nyembuye. The project is almost complete and will provide a life saving service for the many people that live in and around this remote place.

Nyembuye is 25 miles from the nearest hospital and when women who are having trouble in childbirth need to be taken to hospital there is no easy way to get there so I'm told that the men would often have to carry them there and in many cases the women and/or their children would  die before arriving at the hospital. This clinic is so important. We had the pleasure in seeing the building work coming to an end in March and Hugh Henderson, the Mission International Director, a couple of years ago also assisted in bringing the stones down off the the hill to start the foundations.

Shortly the clinic will be opened but there is no piped water or spring water available at the clinic. However they have built a huge water storage tank that will collect rain water from the roof of the building but this is empty because it hasn't rained properly yet. We have been in Africa about 8 weeks now and it has only rained twice in all that time. Both times at night and only for a couple of hours each time. The ground is very dry and dusty.

The locals in the area, young and old, walk about one mile up the hill with plastic jerry cans to collect water from a spring that doesn't appear to every dry up even in the driest times when all other springs dry up in the area. Rema are hoping that they can redirect this water using pipes down to the clinic area which would benefit the local community and the clinic. The problem was that even though they were able to measure the distance from the clinic to the spring they had no way of measuring the height as the height would determine how well the water would flow. As we, with the help of a generous donation from someone in Westhill, managed to purchase an important piece of kit for surveying the land called a Theodolite and bring it with us for the work of Hope Centre. Rema asked if we would be able to help in determining the height for them so my family and I agreed that we would spend the two days up in Rutana surveying the site. We made all the necessary arrangements for the work to continue on the Hope Centre site and set off. We followed one of the Rema jeeps up to Rutana and several hours later we arrived.

Every day the locals have to make this trek from the homes lower down in the mountain to the spring. I asked a local how many jerry cans of water we would have to collect each day for our family of five and they said at least eight jerry cans.

This little guy who can't have been any taller than up to my middle was coming down the hill as we were going up. He was soaking wet but not with sweat but his jerry can had holes in it. It must be soul destroying as he must have lost much of the water by the time he arrived at his home but at least he would have been cool. Many of these pictures were taken by Matthew, one of our sons:

Here you will see this young girl has to carry her younger baby brother or sister on her back as well as carry the jerry can.

Children like their toys. This child was carrying a home made toy with four wheels. It looked like it had been made from the local cane.

Surrounding us on the way up were many banana trees:

Eventually we arrived at the spring which had water trickling out of it and had formed a small pool just deep enough for the locals to sink a jerry can to fill:

Whilst there we discussed with Rema various possibilities for how the water could be diverted down to the clinic:

Then the work of surveying the levels began. One of the pieces of equipment that we needed for surveying is a very long ruler but the one that we have is still in the container that hasn't arrived yet. To get around this problem we nailed two long pieces of cane together and created an 8m ruler. A bit crude but it worked just fine:

Matthew took a few pictures of the friends he made on the journey. It looks as if he has given them his water bottle. The kids will normally beg for the empty bottle and will hold on to it with pride:

We had to stop mid way because it was getting too dark to continue and so marked our spot and returned the next day to continue. That night we stayed at some local agricultural centre. The accommodation was pretty basic but mostly acceptable relative to African standards. Our evening dinner arrived very late due to the cooks getting drunk and disrespecting the management. Apparently the police came and carted them off to jail for the night. Then we had a classic moment with Val standing on the chair as we chased a big dark brown rat around the living room. The next morning we made our way back to the clinic and walked back up the track to the spot that we had stopped at the previous night and continued with the surveying and eventually we arrived back at the clinic. It's the larger building to the left of the images. Samuel is standing on the very large concrete cap that seals the very large water storage tank below:

Both days that we visited we took bags of lollypops for the local kids. Matthew enjoyed handing them out.

These kids are looking worried in case they didn't get a lollypop and unfortunately so many kids turned up that they didn't all get one.

Whilst traveling the journey we had a chance to see the many places where people make the fired clay bricks. This image shows the bricks that have been formed by digging up the clay ground and forming it into brick shapes. These are left to dry in the sun:

These bricks are then stacked up into huge piles with small channels left in the bottom. They then create fires beneath the bricks and keep them going for a week. To the left of the stack you will see some of the wood that  is used for the burning. Apparently it takes about 5 tons of wood to create enough fired clay bricks to build a house. This is causing a major deforestation problem and land slides within the country. This is one of the main reasons that we opted to make our own compressed earth blocks using cement.

Here are some of the simple structures that they build with the bricks in this area:

Some Miscellaneous Pictures:

Here are a few more images of interest. We also had a request to see more images of the family so these are included.

The last time it rained there was a brilliant thunder storm. Here is one of the images that we managed to get:

Here are a couple of images of us when we were in Rutana for the two days.

Have you ever wondered what the inside of a Banana tree trunk looks like? It's very soft like an onion and even peals like one:

A very common site, a mother with her baby on her back being transported by a motorbike taxi. Often these bikes don't put their lights on because they break easily with all the bumpy roads:

Here you see Samuel playing football with some friends. He is the second orange player from the left:

Here is a picture that the boys took of Val and I when we went out for a meal as a family last Sunday: