Here are different ways to contact us in Burundi
Email:
Val Carr = vcarr@HopeCentreBurundi.com
Charles Carr = ccarr@HopeCentreBurundi.com
New Mobile Phone Numbers:
Val Carr: (00257) 79239810
Charles Carr (00257) 79239809
Our New House Phone Number:
Use this number sequence and you will only pay 4p per minute.
Dial: 08444 287287 & wait for a voice and then..
Dial: 00257 22259608
Please email us and let us know if you don't manage to contact us on these numbers.
Non-GiftAid Donations: 
GiftAid Donations: 
1. The whole site now has a temporary fence around its perimeter.
2. All six main foundation walls for each house are now in place.
3. The four main Septic tanks have been built and mostly finished.
4. The nine man holes servicing the houses have been built.
5. The foundation walls for both external toilet blocks also containing showers and sinks have been built.
6. The four large soak-a-ways have been built.
7. One very large shed for block production and workers shelter has been built.
8. One 20' container for storing tools and materials has been bought.
9. The foundations for the 40' container have been built.
10. Two workman's huts have been built.
11. One workers pit latrine has been built.
12. 4 block presses have been purchased and thousands of blocks have now been manufactured.
13. One large truck has been purchased and is being used daily.
14. We have provided much work for the families of a very poor community.
Each week we introduce you to the children of Hope Centre Burundi. We upload a picture of one child and give you their story.
Sonia Irakoze
Sonia's StorySonia is 10 years old. In 2004 both her parents died, one after the other, of HIV. She was six years old at the time. She had no one to look after her as some of her relatives had already been killed in the inter-ethnic fighting in Burundi and others had fled to refugee camps in Tanzania. She found herself living on the streets of Gatumba, and it is from there that Pastor Leonard rescued her.
You have probably already spotted the similarities with Mirielle Gahimbare. The reason for this is that they are in fact sisters but unfortunately, though Mirielle is well, Sonia is HIV Positive.
Sonia is not currently taking ARV (anti-retro-viral) treatment (the most effective therapy for HIV) and only has access to Bactrim, a basic antibiotic drug. This is because of the cost and availability of AVR drugs in Burundi. Sonia currently lives in Gatumba with Pastor Leonard, his family, and the other children he is looking after.
Progress at Hope CentreProgress on the Hope Centre site is consistently good. The men and woman are always happy and singing as they work. So far the rains have not amounted to much so working conditions on the ground are good.
As for the container, it is still in Dar-es-Salaam and we don't know when it will be released. Corruption is probably what is causing the problems with the container now. The port at Dar-es-Salaam is saying that the container is too heavy for the roads of Africa so they want to open the container and split the contents into two smaller containers or charge a penalty for it's weight. Obviously we are not going to accept the first option as many of the items would walk. We have told them not to open the container and have told our UK shipping company to sort it out with the port at Dar-es-Salaam. Please keep praying.
On a lighter note. Here one of our workers is being creative with a cement bag. I'm not entirely sure whey he was doing this. It was either to protect his head from the mid day sun or from the cement that he was working with?
We began pouring the concrete floors this week. Here you see work beginning on the floor of the first house:
The floors for the first house and it's veranda were finally finished. Any time you see a finished concrete floor that hasn't been painted there are often red marks on the surface. You can see why this happens with the dry red earth that blows about in the air and the dust that is inevitably stuck to the workers feet. Most houses end up with a sealing layer of red paint as the finished surface:
Work also began on the floors of the second house. You can see the foundations for houses three and four top left of the picture. Many blocks that had been stored within the foundations had to be relocated first:
The last image was created by merging two images together side by side. The pictures were taken from on top of the stored blocks where I was standing. This picture gives a good indication of how many blocks have now been manufactured on site by our workers. The blocks are stored differently based on the various stages of the curing process:
A couple of storiesToday, with Val in the car, I was stopped again by the police on the road to Gatumba. There were several police at both sides of the road. I was expecting them to ask for my documents but instead one of the police men said, "Give me a beer" at which point I gave him my best disapproving look and gave him a ticking off about his abuse of his authority. He waved me on as they normally do but as I was driving away I turned around to see the rest off the police men doubled up in stitches of laughter. We could hear them laugh as we drove off. It was a very funny moment. I don't think he will stop us again so quickly next time. I was trying to think why he asked for a beer and then it dawned on us that he must have seen the two beer crates in the back of our car but they were only holding our fruit juice bottles.
However, even I was surprised when I heard what another Muzungu (white man) who has been in the country many years, told me this week. He had been up country and had bought something. As he was receiving his change a soldier put his hand over his shoulder and took the change right out of his hand. He said, "I hit him and took my money back." I said, "Where abouts? On his body?" "No," was the reply "on his nose." I asked how the solder had responded. He said, "He didn't, he knew he was in the wrong." Africa is a strange place sometimes.
My other story is related to our car. We had to pay a visit to the local visa office to apply for another three months of visas. I parked my car out side next to where a policeman was standing. When we returned the near side mirror had gone. Was he anything to do with it? Or had he just turned a blind eye? We will never know. However we had been told that if you leave it an hour or so you can visit the second hand market and probably find your mirror there. The next day we asked a Burundian friend if he could visit the market and sure enough he found our very own mirror. Should we have bought it back from the thief or punched him on the nose and run away with the mirror or reported him to the police? I do not really know for sure what the best thing would have been. Everything is so upside down as to how we know how things should really be handled. You have to experience it to appreciate how different things are here.
What NextThis next week we are hoping to make a start on the main walls of the houses. We will also employ more brick layers to allow both the floors and the walls to be built at the same time. We will also bring in a steel worker/welder to manufacture the doors and windows on the site so that these can be installed with the walls.
So what is Christmas like in Burundi?
We have heard people speak about Christmas here in Burundi but haven't seen anything in the shops related to Christmas as we would in the UK. No cards, no Christmas trees and no Christmas lights.
We would love to be here in Burundi over Christmas as we are told that it is completely different without the commercialism of Christmas.
Check out this video clip about Christmas:
[media]http://www.eulogia.co.uk/Christmas.wmv[/media]
Non-GiftAid Donations: GiftAid Donations: 
August 01, 2008, 08:38:15 PM
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