Topic: Week Fourteen's Work is Complete (Read 3564 Times)

ccarr · « **on:** October 24, 2008, 08:45:41 PM »

Week Fourteen's Work is Complete

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Work is still progressing extremely well but I'm sure that you must be getting a little bored looking at bits of concrete and earth so I will try to keep these to a minimum this week. It's a shame that much of the good work that these workers are doing will mostly be hidden out of site, however it won't be long until we start building up the main walls. I feel that the foundation stage of this project is very important as the region that we are building in is classed as a low to medium risk area for earthquakes

Here is where I update the website with the weekly progress report:

The huge concrete slabs will be used to cover the septic tanks:

The forth and last main septic tank is being completed:

Last Sunday our oldest son Josh and Val's sister Maggie arrived from the UK and will be with us for two weeks. It is really good to catch up again:

Josh is playing Pictionary with us:

Sam has been the boss for the last three months but now his authority has been challenged with the arrival of his big brother Josh. We are swimming in the lake which is more like the sea. When we see hippos arriving we have to get out and we have seen crocodiles just about five miles up the cost but apparently they don't like this stretch of the lake as there are waves. Time will tell:

We took Josh and Maggie to the croc sanctuary where Maggie had her first experience holding a snake. This was a very harmless and very cute banana tree snake.

Matthew and John holding a chameleon.

The family all together once again:

We dropped into the Rema offices to introduce Josh and Maggie to the staff. Here we are talking with Felibien, the Rema Director:

Felibien is building a house and can only build when money becomes available. This is the way that everyone appears to build here in Burundi as there is no such thing as a Mortgage. You will see building sites with many workers one day and then no workers the next.

To allow Felibien to continue building he decided to sell his car and use the money on his house. We were looking for a car and his car was just perfect for us. This is the first time that we have had to barter the price up as he was asking for a sum of money much less than it's value. We have been using the car for about six weeks and it is perfect for us. It can be seen in the background of the next picture

His house is being built by a friend called Isaac, who we have become friends with also. Isaac asked us to come and see the progress on Felibien's house. Here you can see Josh standing on what will eventually be the concrete first floor. The whole floor area is being shuttered and steel laid. The whole are as seen in the second picture will be concreted in one day and all mixed by hand:

Here is an example of how the floor area will be concreted. The following two pictures are from a random building that we saw on the way to Gatumba. All the workers are located at certain points on the timber scaffold and then the concrete is passed up the line. The day after this all the workers had gone:

Last but not least, here is a reminder of what this is all about. We took Josh and Maggie to see where some of the children are living and we took this image just before we left:

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Author Topic: Week Fourteen's Work is Complete (Read 3564 Times)

« on: October 24, 2008, 08:45:41 PM »

ccarr

Week Fourteen's Work is Complete