Hello!

It's been nearly a month since we left home on our way to the village of Thamaga, Botswana to help out with the construction of classrooms and a playground for the Botswana Orphan Project...probably about time we started this blog thingy then.

Mum(s) we are safe and healthy.

So much has happened in the last 4 weeks that I can't put it all into one entry (I think I have about 700 photos already....only 200 if you discount the pics of Yas with little African kids and my snap happy ways with African animals). So I'm just gonna talk about the construction side of the project now and follow up later with our times travelling and then Yas can fill you in on all the kids she wanted to smuggle into her pack.

Our team of 22 (1 builder and a selection of farmers, CEO's, OT specialists, soft-handed former lawyers, teenagers and anything else you can think of!) had the challenge of building 3 classrooms, a playground, pathways around the existing buildings, painting all sorts of buildings/playground equipment/murals in 15 working days. Some of you might have seen some of the updates Yas wrote for the project and sent around and no one wants to read my ramblings so here are some pictures so you can see for yourself what we did and how it looks now (Kerry, the planter boxes were my idea...i'm sure you're proud).

This is what the classrooms looked like when we arrived...with 6000 bricks ready and waiting to be carried and laid

Lucky we had some special people on the job



Very special...Yas named her tools (taking centre stage in this pic is Neville the level)

Everyone got very familiar with shovels

I even used power tools! Please note that no children or animals were harmed in the staging of this photo.

And it quickly started taking shape!

Once the roof was on, it was time for the internals....so just the tiling, ceilings, gibstopping, plastering, painting, grouting....you catch my drift

so the experts got stuck in!



and got their hands dirty

Until we finished everything! Only a couple of 3am finishes required

 

So there you have it...we did it! I even used some power tools! I reckon it looks amazing and we hope that it will be a place that can help thousands of orphaned and vulnerable kids get a leg-up in life over the years.

We were given Setswani names by the locals, I am Lefika (The Rock) and Yas is Atang (Multiply)...actually Maa Toni said it was "Go forth and multiply the earth"...bit of a tough task if you ask me! But in my new persona as The Rock, I have no feelings on this matter.

We can't say enough about the qualities of our team and the locals we dealt with...even Matusi (we think it means "cantankerous plasterer"). Each team member gave everything they had in finishing what we had to do and it was amazing that there weren't any major personality clashes amongst 22 mostly strangers who lived on top of each other for 3 weeks.

It was great having a good mate like Tim Marshall around (the guy can fix anything...which is lucky cos he broke loads too...just kidding Reg!) and hanging out with my cuzzy Shiv and her husband Tim (the one builder) was great. We have made some great friends from the project that we hope to stay in touch with.

This has already gone on a bit long so I will wrap it up by saying that thanks to the BOP and the last 4 weeks I have gone from a retired lawyer to a bricklaying, roofstrapping, grinding, block chipping, trench digging, windowsill making, bricklifting, cement mixing, tile glue mixing retired lawyer...and that feels pretty good. Yas is now an expert tiler if anyone needs some bathroom work done and has huuuge muscles from lifting thousands of bricks (all the better to hug kids with!).

We are on our way to Durban after spending some time in Sun City, Pretoria and Johannesburg. Hopefully the sun keeps shining like it has nearly the whole time we have been here.

Will post again soon, haere ra.

Lefika and Atang

ps: classic that Samoa beat the Wallys!