Starting work

We have quite a few power cuts here and they last for several hours, so I didn't get a chance to put up my first days post. You can see it underneath this one.

The adventure playground in progress

Today (Tuesday 16th) I attended the staff meeting at 9am. We all clambered into a small room with benches and mats and one of the house mothers started singing, instantly everyone joined in. It was quite amazing hearing all the harmonies in tune, the different clapping rhythms and seeing the smiles on their faces. It was as if they were an African choir on tour. Music was a big part of their lives growing up here and the babies were surrounded by it.

The meeting finished with some announcements in Rifumbira (The local spoken dialect) and I headed over to the adventure playground to start work. It was reasonably hot but if true to the last couple if days, around 4pm it would poor down.

I focused on one part of the playground, three dome shaped climbing frames. My job was to secure plastic sheets to the inside for shade using a slip knot followed by an overhand knot.
After an hour or so my hands, which were used only to the taps of a keyboard were rope burned and hurting...but it felt good to be outdoors.
The climbing frame was made of bamboo, extremely light and tough, which is why when James' foot went through one of the shoots we were both puzzled.
It came to light that during the afternoon and evening downpours, water had been collecting inside the shoots and after a couple of days weakening them. This meant the whole structure could potentially be unstable, so for the rest of the afternoon we took turns drilling 3 holes in every bamboo shoot for drainage. This turned out to be quite comical because we had no idea which shoots would be dry and which would be wet, so sporadically stagnant water would hit us in the face.

Around 5 the clouds started to darken as they drew in, so we called it a day.