A Long Day of Zege and a Job Well Done

The construction team after a long day

Yesterday evening, around 6, a tired crew posed for a picture at the Kingigoro Primary school site.  5 EWB   members, 2 Village Life mentors, and a large group of employees and volunteers from the Burere Village had been working for 8 long days to see this moment.  The foundation of a new 2 classroom building was dug, formed and poured.  Everyone was exhausted and dirty from a day of concrete mixing, placing and finishing. An amazing 64,000 pounds worth of concrete had been placed by hand in a single day.  

Emily and Freddie tying rebar

If you've been following the blog, you know most of the steps leading up to yesterday's work.  I left off a few days ago with finishing the boxes which would become the footings under the columns and tying the rebar.  Once the bar was tied, we cut all of the excavated boxes to fit them.  On Saturday, we put all of the bar in the excavated boxes and tied the reinforcing bar for the strip footings which will support the brick walls.  This took some work, as everything needed to be placed 3" above the soil in order for it to be completely surrounded by concrete.  After all of the steel was in place, we lowered in the forms which our carpenter, Sakai, and Kelsey had been working on.  Everything fit well and looked great.

On Sunday, we worked with only three volunteers.  The task of the day was squaring and leveling the forms so that the final foundation would be straight and flat.  The day went a little longer than expected, but one full day of work saw our forms nearly completed and looking great.  We also had some visitors from the hill behind the school who were interested in what we were up to.  A troop of baboons came down onto some large boulders to watch us work.  Zach has some great pictures of them, unfortunately I do not.

Measuring and discussing before mixing concrete began

Then came the big day, zege (Kiswahili for concrete)!  A large task was at hand and would take all of our volunteers, hired fundis and students.  We needed to mix 90 bags of cement weighing 50 kg apiece with over  120 wheel barrows of stone and over 50 wheel barrows of sand to get to our 16.25 cubic yard goal.  The work was backbreaking and hot.  We managed to finish half of the job before lunch and completed the other after.  The total day, including lunch break, lasted from 8 am until 6 pm.  Everything went smoothly, besides the inevitable soreness and exhaustion.  The Burere community now has a foundation upon which EWB, Village Life and the community will continue to build.

Zach, Kelsey and Otoke finishing concrete

The challenging logistics of creating the foundation became more and more apparent each day on site.  The team worked hard and kept going despite long days under a hot sun.  The community provided two shifts of volunteers each day of work and all of them worked hard as well.  Our general contractor, Julius, had originally given us a quote for 18 days of work.  We managed, to his amazement, complete the task in less than half that many days.  The whole work team worked like crazy and the results were phenomenal.  The team should be in Nairobi resting as I type this blog post.  Tomorrow, they should be going on a short safari in Nairobi National Park before boarding their flight home to USA tomorrow evening.  They were a great group and I wish them safe travels over the next few days.

A big thanks goes out to everyone who made this possible starting with the EWB travel team.  Also thanks to our travel mentor team of Richard and Emily Elliott who guided us through all 8 days of work.  We could not have made it here without the help of the EWB design team and mentors Tom Bible, Julie Cromwell and Jason Jones.  Also, thanks is due for our donor partners who make the whole project happen through generosity.