WORKSHOP WEEK 2

Antalee dear followers! 

Another week has passed already and construction is fully underway now. We are getting slowly used to the physical work which can be quite strenuous, especially with the sun shining at full strength. We however have had some health issues in our team this week as we are all coping with our new diet.  Fortunately all patients are feeling much better again so we expect to be complete again at the start of week 3. For some of the volunteers this will be their last week in Sang before heading back home and we can only hope our next crew will be as pleasant as this one!

Our goal for this week was to finish the pedestal for the first module and the trench foundation for the second module of the cafeteria. Although we have not been able to meet our goals we nonetheless made good progress. Especially taking into consideration the several sick people we had this week and the rain that forced us to finish early on Monday. The week started with the delivery of our eco-bricks which we ordered last week from Tamale. As the truck did not have anything to unload the approx. 3000 bricks we had to unload them by hand… very annoying! After waiting for the concrete to dry we started laying the first layer of bricks on the foundation. This has been quite the precise job and it took a while to get them lined up perfectly. Because the drilling bit we ordered got lost somehow on the way from Tamale to Sang, we were not able to continue with our base. We have to drill  reinforcement rods into the foundation to hold the pedestal in place. So hopefully we can continue this next week. The greater part of the week however has been mixing concrete again, which is definitely not the lightest exercise when you have to do it manually! Luckily we have only a little bit left so the upcoming week should be slightly less intensive for that matter. 

Besides the physical workload on the building site we also had lots of things to organize this week. As we will have some rammed-earth experts (Joelle and Kwame) from Accra who will join us the coming week (on Thursday afternoon). By then we need to have our formworks prepared so we can have our crash-course ‘rammed-earth walls’.  This is however not so easy as these formworks are rather specific. It has been a lot of calling and emailing this week and it will be quite the challenge to get it done in time. As our contact here in Sang, Pastor,  would say, we like to believe it can be done!

Well, we are not sure if this all makes a lot of sense to everyone back home but the  bottom line is that it is hard work here, not just the physical work on site but also the organizing and planning is a continuous process and we haven’t had a lot of free time yet. Most importantly however is that we are having fun and enjoying our time here. The people and the children are so friendly which makes it all worth while. And we also have our own motorbike now which is great. We however got our asses kicked by the local soccer team so we need to straighten this out very soon.

Well we will try to enjoy our Sunday now a bit so we are rested and well prepared for an exiting week ahead of us with hopefully the start of our first rammed earth wall! 

Stay tuned and till next week! 

P.S. We announced last week that we will introduce our team but we forgot to make some nice close ups this week so we will do this next week.