Topic: Week Sixteen's Work is Complete (Read 3468 Times)

ccarr · « **on:** November 07, 2008, 08:39:52 PM »

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Week Sixteen's Work is Complete

Because I am basically lazy by nature and don't have enough material to use for this weeks update I will probably plagiarise some of Val's news letter. However, starting next week we hope to write a short article and profile for each of the Hope Centre children. We will introduce one child each week to these updates and give you their story, that way we and you will get to know the children that many of you are already supporting financially

Meet Odfax

Who is Odfax?

Odfax is one of our employees at the house. We employ him to help clean the house, do the ironing, open and close the gates and attend to some of the gardening. He looks sixteen years old but is actually 33 years old with a wife and three children. It may seem a bit strange and possibly a bit ostentatious to have helpers work in your house. It certainly was for us to begin with but it is very much part of the culture here in Burundi and very much appreciated by them. For us, even though we pay them more than the going rate and apparently more than what a teacher gets, it is not a lot of money so it helps us and them at the same time. Until this week they received 15,000 fbu for 5 days work, which works out about £7.50 a week each, much less than a cleaner would charge per hour in the UK.

I asked Odfax how he previously earned a living. He said he would buy food etc and take it to market and hopefully make a profit. He said that many days both he, his wife and family would have nothing to eat so they would get down on their knees and pray. He said that getting this job was an answer to their prayers. I must admit I was quite moved by his story.

(Extract from the news letter)
We are really enjoying being in our own house now and having our own things around us. It is a big house with plenty of space for anyone wanting to come and visit. We have been so humbled by the circumstances of our house staff and their gratitude for the pittance of a wage they are paid (although we pay them well by local standards). Odfax, our housekeeper is 33. He is married with three children age, 5, 3, and a baby. His father died some years ago and his mother has remarried, abandoning her original family, so Odfax is also responsible for his younger brothers and sister who are aged from 10-19. He walks a long distance to work and we wanted to get him a bike. The accepted way to do this is to give him a loan of money, then take a small amount off his wages each week. He earns so little we felt that this was going to cause difficulties for him, so we decided that we would raise his wages effectively to cover the amount he was paying back for the bike so that he had no less money in his hands at the end of the week. It will take him 30 weeks to pay back the money for the bike, then he will get the extra money in his wages. He was so grateful and told us this was a miracle for him and his family, as he had been trying to figure out how much he could possibly afford to lose each week and still keep everything together. It is very humbling and we need so much wisdom, as we want to be kind to these guys who work so hard, but don’t want to cause dissatisfaction and problems with other people’s workers whom we know are paid less. Wages in this country are generally very low and what we are paying our workers is more than teachers are being paid right now, so you can see the potential problems. If teachers could earn more as housekeepers, then the school system would fail and we would have another generation of uneducated adults with no prospects for improving their lives.

Odfax with his new pride and joy.

This bike cost Odfax £75 new. We also assisted our night guard in the purchase of a new bike which is almost identical to Odfax's bike. Now, we are no strangers to bikes. I myself used to build my own bikes from scratch when I was a young lad and now, with having four of our own boys, we have had to purchase many a new bike over the last few years. In the UK when you buy a bike it is often dismantled and involves half an hours work to build it back up before use. The night guard arrived with his box of bike parts and said that he would need to take it to the mechanic but I said to him that we could just build it together so we opened the box and to my surprise the box contained every part of the bike but almost nothing assembled. Even the wheels consisted of the basic parts such as a bag of spokes. The bike would have taken me the most of a day to assemble so I asked what the mechanic would charge for building up the bike. 5000 fbu was the response. That is about £2.50.

As for Odfax, I asked him what his wife and family thought about his new bike he said "that they were all so excited" and added "that he couldn't understand why this was happening to him".

In this country it is so easy and cheap to bless someone. Even just a smile produces such an appreciative response

On Site at Hope Centre Burundi

Work, as always, is progressing well on the Hope Centre site. Even the truck has been running well this week. Unfortunately we still don't have the container that was supposed to arrive on Thursday this week. The foundations are in for the toilet/shower block:

Blocks are continuing to be stacked in the vicinity of the houses that they will be used for:

Now that the main foundations are in for the houses the remaining small foundations for the veranda's are being built. This should take no more than a weeks work:

The newly produced protected block piles continue to grow in height:

At the same time the levels around each house are still be raised to what will eventually be the new ground level:

So what is next?

Once the veranda foundations are completed then we should be pouring the concrete floors. It would be so good if the container was to arrive now as we have two good cement mixers on board and many good float trowels for leveling the concrete, however it always amazes me how good a finish the workers achieve with the most basic of tools. After the floors then the main red facing brick (Soil Blocks) walls will be started.

(Extract from the news letter)
We have been very encouraged recently by donations we have received for the project (both big and small) and would like to thank everyone who has donated for their generosity and kindness. It is good to know that we are working together to ‘make the world a better place’ as the Mission International logo states.

Charles & Val

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Author Topic: Week Sixteen's Work is Complete (Read 3468 Times)

« on: November 07, 2008, 08:39:52 PM »

ccarr

Week Sixteen's Work is Complete