Phase III Has Begun

Good Evening from Tanzania!

     Richard and I arrived in Shirati Friday evening after three full, tiring days of travel. Upon arriving in Shirati we stopped in to say hi to Dr. Esther and Josia Kawira. We then had a quick dinner and then it was time for some much needed rest.

Burere Schoolhouse

    On Saturday, we started the day by heading out to Burere to view the site and perform an inventory of what we had available supply wise, and to finally see what the building looked like after the ISSBs were finally in place. We were not disappointed, and the building looks amazing. It is pretty awesome to see so many years of hard work paying off. While in Burere, we also went down to take a look at Jim Moyer's pit latrine project, which he completed while he was on Co-op with Village Life.

SOTA Clinic

    After spending the morning and part of the afternoon in Burere, we decided we needed to see the SOTA Clinic being constructed by the one and only Julius, our contractor in the region. The building is very big, approximately 175ft by 30ft, and sits right along the shore of Lake Victoria. We also find out that the same crew in Burere that had made the bricks for the schoolhouse had been given the job of producing 15,000 ISSBs for the SOTA Clinic. It was pretty cool to see some of the construction techniques we had taught them on display at another project in the area.

Two of Julius's Children

  
On Sunday we decided it was a good day to relax and coordinate logistics and our plan of attack for the coming week. December 9th is also Tanzania's independence day, so that just made the decision easier. We began the day by hanging out with Julius, Daniel (our translator), and Sakei (our carpenter). We had breakfast and lunch at Julius's house, and then returned to Shirati in the afternoon for a meeting with SHED.

Then it was off to bed since we were going to leave Shirati at 7am.

Bracing being put into place

    On Monday we began work in Burere. We immediately had the workers start cutting and bending the #3 rebar for the stirrups (we need 332 for the ring beam), and we hit the ground running. Sakei began creating the bracing the formwork, and Richard and I ran the water level around the top to find the exact height of the bottom of the ring beam. In the afternoon I began working on the #6 rebar for the beam, and the workers and I had successfully cut and bent 8 pieces of rebar for beam.

    Tuesday we got a bright and early start (we were on the road by 620am) and the second day was off to a good start. Sakei successfully got the bottom of the box into place, constructed scaffolding, and we began placing the rebar cage into place at one end of the building. This was a very difficult task, and we spent most of the day working on getting the four pieces of #6 and the stirrups into place. Work was slower today than it was yesterday, but hopefully the pace will pick up so we can pour concrete on Saturday. Once work was completed for the day we went to Shirati to place and order for the necessary lumber for the second half of the building it ended up taking one and a half hours to order 100 2x4s, 20 1x8s, 32 1x2s, 8 1x6's and 12 1x4's.

The day has finally come to an end and progress is being made on the third phase of the project.

Good Night! (or Good Afternoon for those 8 hours behind us)