Topic: Week Nineteen's Work is Complete (Read 3731 Times)

ccarr · « **on:** November 29, 2008, 08:38:18 AM »

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Week Nineteen's Work is Complete

Pastor Leonard

Pastor Leonard Story

Pastor Leonard was born in 1971, the youngest of five children. His parents were killed in a mass killing of their ethnic group in 1972. The children struggled to survive and look after each other for many years.

As a teenager Leonard was full of hatred and wanted to avenge the killing of his parents, but he became a Christian when he was 18 and was able to meet and forgive those who had killed his parents. He felt God told him clearly that he was to look after others who were orphaned as he had been.

At the time his circumstances did not allow him to do this, but he was ordained as a Pastor in 1996, and was able to take in his first orphan in 1997, just before he was married.

His wife partners him in this ministry and they now care for over 40 orphans in addition to their own three children.

Around about April this year Pastor Leonard's land-lord for the house that he was staying in asked Pastor Leonard and all the family and children to move out of the property which they were renting. Obviously this was an impossible situation for them. Latterly Pastor Leonard managed to negotiate a compromise with the land lord whereby his immediate family and a few of the orphans could stay in the property until his house was built. This meant that the remaining orphans had to be farmed out to friends that would be willing to take them. Pastor Leonard continues to provide food and clothing for these children which is now even more difficult for him. Thankfully though you have helped him greatly with your regular child support donations.

Each week we introduce you to the children of Hope Centre Burundi. We upload a picture of one child and give you their story.

Eddy Nsengiyumva

Eddy's Story

Eddy is 4 years old. Both of Eddy’s parents were killed in a massacre in Burundi in 2004 when he was only 6 months old.

Some neighbours took care of him for a few months but, when he became ill and needed hospital treatment, they left him at the hospital as they could not afford to pay the bills. Pastor Leonard heard about him and managed to raise the funds and pay the bill. He asked his sister to look after Eddy for the first year as he was still young and needed a lot of care.

Eddy is now living with some friends of Pastor Leonard until the Hope Centre children’s houses are completed when he will return to live with the rest of the children.

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For us personally at our own house, we have had to put up with both the water and the electricity being cut for many hours at a time this week. Yesterday the power was off for about 24 hours. During this time all our laptops discharged and we were left playing cards by candlelight in the evening. Sam, on the other hand, found that his iPod still had enough charge to work. Here he is listening to his iPod in the candle light:

Progress at Hope Centre

This week we have many good things to report. However the week began with an unpleasant accident on site. Three workers were injured when they sat down beside some blocks. They disturbed the ground that the blocks were sitting on and then some blocks fell on them. Two of the workers were women and the other a man. One man and one woman were slightly injured and were off work for a day but one woman was hit on the head and back and had to be hospitalised. This is certainly not the kind of news that we want to be presenting you with in our reports.

This gave us quite a fright but we are happy now to report that the woman will be home today (Saturday) and is expected to make a full a speedy recovery.

The potential for accidents is very great on a project of this type and size and the fact that there are no heath and safety regulations here in Burundi doesn't help either. Many of our woman carry buckets on their heads so hard hats for them would be impossible and the intense heat would also make it impossible. Having said that, we have been able to take a look at all the potential hazards and highlight these to the workers and site supervisor.

Some more of the remaining tank and soak-away covers were also located this week. A fork lift would have made this dangerous job a lot easier. You will probably notice that many of the men are wearing yellow soled wellington boots and the remaining workers are mostly all wearing new sandals. We bought the wellingtons for the cement workers to stop the cement burning their feet. The other workers were wearing out their own sandals or didn't have any foot wear at all so we bought them all the new sandals.

You may think that this is nothing great but apparently other building companies don't provide their workers with anything to wear on their feet:

You Continue to Give:

We were so blessed this week when a donation of £1,500 was given towards the project. From what I understand the donors had just found the Hope Centre website on the internet and had been prompted to get involved. This is so good and encouraging for us to see how the effects of this project are reaching around the world.

This is only one example of how many of you are helping. Apologies if we don't specifically mention your involvement but we really appreciate everyones help. It has been so amazing for us to witness.

The saga of the elusive container:
From the email that have received from the port at Dar-es-Salaam it would now appear that we will be receiving our container today (Saturday) into the port here at Bujumbura. The email didn't say too much but did contain the following information.

* The date on which the container left their port.
* The container number.
* The lorry number.
* The lorry driver's name.
* The lorry driver's mobile number.

For those who have been praying about this problem, it is clearly a big turn around from where we were one week ago. An American friend that lives here had a similar problem with a container. He had to pay a $2000 deposit as well as other charges and visit Dar-es-Salaam to sort the problem. He eventually received his container but not the deposit. Another friend had to send a group of people to supervise the containers being unloaded into other containers to make sure that items were not stolen by the port authorities. You can imagine that I was not looking forward to anything like this happening.

Once the container is delivered here at Bujumbura port the saga does not end. It will still have to be released from the port and then we have to get it onto the site at Gatumba. I will not rest until I see the container sitting on it's foundations at Gatumba. It contains so many things that we need right now on site.

On site the concrete floors are continuing. The floors are now in on house no1 and no2 with house no3 half completed.

The Block Work Begins:

This is the part that most of you will have probably been looking forward to seeing. The work on the block work has begun. The bricklayers are experienced at laying their small clay bricks but these blocks are very new to them. This is slowing them down a little but by the time they begin the second house they will know exactly what to do.

You will probably observe that there are spaces within the walls and at the corners with steel rods within. Once the block work is up we will pour concrete into these sections. This is part of the earthquake proofing that we are incorporating within the structures. Most structures here that incorporate this system with the concrete posts and beams will have the concrete posts built first and then lay the bricks between the posts. The problem with that is that there is no fixing between the posts and the brickwork so in an earthquake the structural concrete post and beams will stand but the brickwork is independent of the main structure and can easily collapse. Our system allows us to insert steel ties between the block work and the concrete posts before the are poured.

The black DPC (Damp Proof Course) is positioned and the blocks are stacked ready for the work to begin:

Here is the, all important, first block that was laid. A very exciting moment for Pastor Leonard:

This line of blocks possibly took about three hours to lay with the brickies having to be shown the correct way to lay them, so that the cuts look symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing. However the pattern used on the first house is used on them all:

Once the brickies figured out how they should build the work progressed steadily:

You will probably notice that the cement pointing between the blocks is being raked out. The reason for this is that we will point up the joints with a coloured cement mix (probably a mix of cement, sand and red earth) at a later stage. So, how do they cut these blocks in half? With a machete of course...

Last but no least. Val took this picture of the local children peeking through the fence:

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Author Topic: Week Nineteen's Work is Complete (Read 3731 Times)

« on: November 29, 2008, 08:38:18 AM »

ccarr

Week Nineteen's Work is Complete