Zimbabwebound

The other day I was able to take the central African regional director out to Willow Park to show and tell him all that is happening.  Whilst out at Willow Park we were able to give the young men from Mawabeni a break from the build and present them with their certificates for preparing and building a brick structure.  They were so proud in getting their first certificate and I was told by the builder that they when they got back to working they started to sing about receiving their certificates.

The building of the dining hall is going extremely well and all the young men we are training are REALLY appreciating the experience they are getting.  It has been encouraging to hear them all speak about how these new skills will not only benefit them (building their own houses) but also their community.  They are asking our builder how they can build a proper toilet for their community because at the moment their toilets are just tin walls with a rickety tin door and they want to build a new toilet block with brick walls and a proper door.

Our trainer / builder has left for a month to go to a church conference in the UK and the guys have been carry on with the job of laying the last of the bricks … and boy have they done an EXCELLENT job.  All the walls are just about completed (there are only 3 courses left on one of the outside walls) and they are eagerly waiting to lay more of the floor and learn from one of our workers at Willow Park how to plaster.

You know what? I have crossed this bridge so many times over the last year that it has just become part of the norm; but boy this dam bridge (I am not swearing … it is a dam that also acts as a bridge) is starting to get a few leaks in it and most of the “other side” has eroded away … it will probably only take a few more rainy seasons and we will need to invest in a barge to get the cars from one side to the other.  This bridge leads over one of our smaller waterways and is the gateway to Willow Park Camps.  Make sure you keep tuned to http://zimbabwebound.com to find out more and to see how you can help Willow Park rebuild this troubled bridge of waters.

This whole building project has definitely been an interesting task to say the least.  I know that when building back in Brisbane it didn’t take much to find the labour or the materials to complete a variety of tasks … come to Bulawayo and it is a totally different story.

I had always planned to be on the build site to get some building experience but I just have not had the time to stay out at Willow Park all day every day.  A majority of my time is spent sourcing out all the building material such as cement or trowels at a reasonable rate and then trying to find the funds in cash to pay for such rare commodities. Fun and games all round!!!

Just the other day I came out to Willow Park to collect some of our trainees to take them to the local rural council to pay for pitt sand and then we would have to drive another 30 kms to the site and load the back of the bakkie manually.  Much to my delight, one of our young men knew of a “location” where pitt sand could be retrieved without paying for it from the rural council (don’t worry it was totally legal … I made sure of it).  After a VERY bumpy ride through the bush we came to an old private mining site with more than enough pitt sand to build 100 dining halls.  As they always say … “it’s not what you know but who you know”.