Building begins

A classroom

Day eight - Tuesday 4 August 2009

The day of reckoning - a good deal of talk so far and not much action on the building front, until today.

Crew was required on site at 7.30 am - and we left the guest house at 7.00, sandwiches and squashed bananas in hand.

Arrival at Watoto Subi 2 Village was much anticipated by the team, and we were driven through the earlier stages of the complex en route to pad site 263. All of the houses are built in clusters around a central "green". The floor plan and design of our project is consistent with this.

The drive to the village from Kampala is something of a shock to the unaccustomed senses - heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic congestion, diverse but basic cottage business activities along the main roads and very high density rudimentary housing along dusty lanes to the rear.

In contrast to this backdrop, the Watoto complex presents high quality residential accommodation with open, park like spaces with primary and secondary school accommodation on site. It is clear that if we can get dwelling 263 to stand up - it will provide a quality of accommodation to its child residents which would simply be otherwise unimaginable.

On arrival to the site we were met by Joseph - building foreman and his team who we were to work with for the next few days. Basic building demonstration was completed, and from that point we were officially on the job.

The extent to which we were "on the job" soon became clear; all bricks are made on site - from a damp soil / cement mix compressed into a mould on site and air dried. The brick making team could easily have doubled as the Uganda boxing team - 6 hard bodied chaps with Olympian physiques and a don’t mess with me attitude.

Job 1 was to load bricks from the brick processing area for transport to pad 263, then unload and distribute around the pad. Having amused the brick makers with our initial white collar approach to hard labour and brick handling, we eventually loaded a couple of truck loads of bricks, and armed with gloves, trowels, and a poor (quite poor actually) playlist from the Rhigas ipod, we started the main game.

Joseph's main objective for the day was to complete the external walls to window sash height. It came as a significant surprise to all within a couple of hours that this might actually be achieved. Under the watchful eyes of Joseph and his team of builders (including 3 Ronnies) it emerged that we were not quite as bad as we thought we might be, and the experts on hand were not required to replace / rectify perhaps as much shoddy bricklaying than 1st thought.

By morning smoko time progress was well underway. By lunch time we were at near sash height and contemplating a start on internal walls. With the threat of absolute efficiency looming as a reality, shop steward P Hodby was successful in negotiating an extended lunch time break to slow things down a bit, and distract us with a tour of the secondary school in the Watoto Village.

The school is principally for the orphan residents of Watoto, though it has attracted external students including boarding students for which accommodation has been developed on site.

It was not difficult to see the obvious attraction from our visit to the school. Teacher to student ratios of 35:1 vs ratio of 120 +:1 in the government school system, a diverse academic and vocational education curriculum, a high quality physical environment and a culture of pride and respect was clearly evident. There was not a student that we met who did not offer a disarming Ugandan smile, a warm welcome and a thank you for visiting.

Buoyed by this spirit, Team Kain was able to dissuade Shop Steward Hodby from further diversionary tactics, and we returned to pad 263 with renewed vigour. By the time we wound up for the day we had completed all external and internal walls to sash height, and had installed 50% of the windows.

So back to the guest house we went - happy, dirty, smelly and singing enthusiastically as one (except for Jeckaa, quite understandably) to the appalling Rhigas playlist. It was a great 1st day on the tools - and as we went over the hill and caught a last day 1 glimpse of pad 263, the reality that the house might actually stay up also became a real possibility.

Ben