.JPG)
Who’d have thought earth bags could be so exciting?! I think Martyn was truly gratified by the genuine ‘Wows’ of Andrew, Kath and me when we clapped our eyes upon the walls of a school being built entirely of plastic bags filled with earth. Sad but true. He had been contacted by someone last year who had seen his design competition and thought he might be interested in this innovative and sustainable technique. Since then he’s been very enthusiastic and really wanted to visit the school but it was over the border into Burundi and we weren’t sure how far the other side. It also looked to involve buying Burundi visas just for a couple of hours or so. Unfazed, we formed a plan. There is a nursery school we have just finished building that needed checking, in Bweyeye but this is four hours each way over a horrendous road (it’s only 60 km so that gives an indication of the state of the road). However, there is an alternative route which involves crossing the border briefly into Burundi. Previously us mzungus haven’t used this route because of the visa issue. However, we decided to combine the trip to Bweyeye with a trip to the earth bag school, and risk the visa necessity. Prince, our country manager here, knocked up a few official looking papers for each of us, stating we were en route to Bweyeye, on Rwanda Aid business, and weren’t staying in Burundi – and these had the all important Rwanda Aid stamp. Well, it worked!! No money exchanged hands at all and all passports were appropriately stamped. Hurrah. After a bit if a search we found the aforementioned school – fortunately we did have Jean Claude, our building manager with us so there was some communication possible when desperately seeking directions. And as I said, when we found the school, we were genuinely wowed. I think the South African project manager was equally wowed by our interest because he drove all the way from Bujumbura, the capital, just to see us.
He hadn’t known we were coming, but dropped everything. Or was it that he was so pleased to get a chance to speak English at a quicker pace for a change? Judging by how much he practised his, I suspect the latter had some bearing. He was certainly very informative! We were particularly interested because the winners of the design competition had designed an earth bag house in their entry – and we’re due to start building a prototype tomorrow!! And I do mean us! We’re all primed and set. Kath helped to collect a load of necessary equipment last week, the empty bags have been purchased, the tampers (to ram the earth tight) are ready and waiting – made by Kath herself! – and the lunch shopping list has been planned. 
Hoping for a good night’s sleep – it’s going to be pretty hard labour….
Well! My blisters tell the tale! Hard labour was a bit on the optimistic side. We’re totally knackered! I knew Martyn was being a tad unrealistic when he was hoping to get the first of three earth bag ‘pods’ (rooms) built in a day – bearing in mind each one involves filling, ramming and laying 600 earth bags, but if I tell you we filled three bags you get the idea of just how optimistic he was being. Instead it was hard
manual 
labour with shovels, forks and some sort of heavy hoes, hacking away at the land, trying to level and clear it. There were the four of us, Patrick our driver who is mega-fit and six other local labourers toiling away. But we did clear a lot. I was quite impressed with our efforts. Of course it had to be our hottest day so far so the blazing sun didn’t exactly assist in our general comfort. Despite my poor hands suffering an interesting array of blisters, it was a really satisfying day. Mind you, tomorrow now looms large with more of the same – though hopefully we’ll be able to fill a few 
more bags this time, and dig the trench for the foundations.
He hadn’t known we were coming, but dropped everything. Or was it that he was so pleased to get a chance to speak English at a quicker pace for a change? Judging by how much he practised his, I suspect the latter had some bearing. He was certainly very informative! We were particularly interested because the winners of the design competition had designed an earth bag house in their entry – and we’re due to start building a prototype tomorrow!! And I do mean us! We’re all primed and set. Kath helped to collect a load of necessary equipment last week, the empty bags have been purchased, the tampers (to ram the earth tight) are ready and waiting – made by Kath herself! – and the lunch shopping list has been planned. 
Hoping for a good night’s sleep – it’s going to be pretty hard labour….
Well! My blisters tell the tale! Hard labour was a bit on the optimistic side. We’re totally knackered! I knew Martyn was being a tad unrealistic when he was hoping to get the first of three earth bag ‘pods’ (rooms) built in a day – bearing in mind each one involves filling, ramming and laying 600 earth bags, but if I tell you we filled three bags you get the idea of just how optimistic he was being. Instead it was hard
manual 
labour with shovels, forks and some sort of heavy hoes, hacking away at the land, trying to level and clear it. There were the four of us, Patrick our driver who is mega-fit and six other local labourers toiling away. But we did clear a lot. I was quite impressed with our efforts. Of course it had to be our hottest day so far so the blazing sun didn’t exactly assist in our general comfort. Despite my poor hands suffering an interesting array of blisters, it was a really satisfying day. Mind you, tomorrow now looms large with more of the same – though hopefully we’ll be able to fill a few 
more bags this time, and dig the trench for the foundations.
On other fronts we’ve checking up on building projects (Martyn – amongst a trillion other things of course!); putting together information needed to twin a secondary school here with one in England – and wrestling madly with the internet as there is a deadline, soon, with a fair amount of emailing back and forth required, working on a ‘Graduation Proposal’ for our village for disabled children Ngwino Nawe (me); and viewing plots of 
land for potential house building for very needy recipients, sourcing possible locations for establishing a vocational training centre, making regular forays into the local town and market for an array of obscure building materials, samosas by the ton – picnic lunches for us labourers, generally eating drinking and being merry - and overall having a jolly fine time (all of us). 
No comments:
Post a Comment