Build for Better Lives

Day 3 - Build Site & Danganya Kwa Gumbi Primary school.

Everyone settled in brilliantly again this morning, deciding on what jobs they were going to do without too much instruction, and cracking on in high spirits. The overall feeling is that we'd all love to see Princess's house finished before Friday - obviously, this may or may not happen, but given the progress we've made so far (the builders are nearly ready to start putting up roof trusses, and Aamon and Pearl are very pleased with the rate of progress in the first few days) there's no reason at all why we shouldn't get the job completely finished. Sam had arranged with Aamon to place the 'Thought Tin' in one of the blocks in an internal wall of the house, and we invited Princess to join the whole crew and to place the tin inside herself. Aamon explained the principle and the thought behind this gesture, and no one could fail to see she was really moved. I think quite a few of us got a bit choked at this point (I noticed quite a few sunglasses getting put back on - can't imagine why).

The Build for Better Lives team leaders had spoken with Carl our host affiliate earlier in the week, with the view to arrange a visit to a local school in the Danganya area, and today we broke off work for a while to visit the children just up the road from Princess's house at Kwa Gumbi Primary school. We turned up mob handed, and were met with huge smiles from the Principal and the local kids. They'd obviously been told well in advance that we were planning to visit, as the entire school came out into the school yard, and treated us to traditional Zulu songs and dance, as well as children's rhymes in English, and we were all amazed to realise that all the kids had obviously rehearsed in preparation for our visit. Pearl explained the lyrics to one particular uplifting song - the children were singing 'thank you' to us for being there, which was incredibly touching. Three of our crew, Josh, Dan and Emma had prepared speeches for the kids, saying how we were privileged to be here in such a beautiful country, the purpose of our project, and how we are so grateful for being so warmly welcomed into their community, which Aamon had translated to rapturous applause. Today also happened to be Pearl's birthday, and everyone, kids, teachers and BfBL crew sang happy birthday to her, to her obvious embarrassment, although I get the feeling she was secretly quite pleased.

The rest of the day was spend back at the build site, mixing dagga, pointing up brickwork, moving blocks, applying bag wash, and preparing for the last few days and final push towards fully completing the build and handing the house over to Princess and her family.