Monday, July 7, 2008

Putting the Work in Workcamp

At some point I do want to tell you about the AVP workshop we did last week but we're all so excited about starting to work today, I'm going to talk about that instead.

We started in right away, just walked through the gate and started picking up stones. Today we were laying the foundation for the new brick wall going around the clinic. If you've ever wondered how people used to build those old stone walls you sometimes see, I've now become something of an observational expert. During the AVP workshop we'd seen people digging a deep 2 foot wide trench behind the clinic. This morning when we arrived the skilled workers were piling large stones in the trench and putting a mud made of red clay & sand mixed with water in the cracks. They had small mallets which they used to chip pieces off the stones to get them to fit they way they wanted to. Often they'd search around a bit for the right shaped stone and then chip away at it to make it just right. Like reverse engineering a puzzle. So our first task was bringing them stones along with buckets and wheelbarrows full of mud. I learned the Kirundi for small stone (amawiye ritoya) and large stone (amawiye rine). Before long we were pretty much covered with red streaks from the mud. By we I mean the mzungus. Somehow Odette, Eric, Alexia, Claire and Maxime all managed to stay clean while doing exactly the same work we were doing.

Then for a while John and I worked with Samuel on making the rebar supports for the cement bracing of the wall. The rebar comes in long pieces bent like a paperclip several times over. So first Samuel has to straighten the bar, first by hand and then after it's cut with a mallet on stone. Then we measured out marks every 20cm and with bits of wire attached square pieces of rebar to four long straight pieces, creating a column. The columns get put in at the corners and in the middle and then filled with cement. Another one lays along the top of the stone foundation in between the columns. Then I believe bricks go on top of that. Stay tuned to find out.

All of this work by the way is done with one hammer, one real mallet, one hacksaw, two pairs of pliers and a couple of improvised mallets for the stone workers. There's no trough for mixing the cement so the sand, rocks and cement mix are poured in a heap on the ground and mixed with shovels (we've got 2). They make a well in the center of the pile (like when you're making muffins) and water is poured in. Again it's carefully mixed using the shovels while maintaining a bit of a water well at the center. We've got one large metal bucket and one small plastic one for hauling the cement so we also used the cement mix bags themselves, cut open and laid flat with a person on each end twisting two corners together. Pretty amazing how much we manage to do with so little. By the time we left this afternoon the whole back foundation had been laid and the side wall foundation was on its way, being laid out with string stretched between bamboo stakes.

We tend to attract crowds of children wherever we go and today was no exception. As we were hauling stones from the street a bunch of kids came to watch. Then before you could say jambo they were picking up stones (the ritoya ones) and following us back to the side wall. At one point I think there were at least 15 kids, carrying stones in a line looking quite pleased with themselves. Who says child labor can't be fun?

Speaking of which, Adrien's 8 year old son Jonathan was with us all day working just as hard as anyone, carrying stones, the small plastic bucket of mud, picking up bamboo sticks and even helping to wire the rebar. It seemed he was constantly on the lookout for something to do and he kind of put the rest of us to shame.

It was such a great feeling today to be working on something concrete (ha!) seeing women coming and going from consultations with Claire (when she wasn't hauling stones), knowing that Maxime was in the lab testing blood for HIV (when he wasn't hauling stones) and really getting the sense of the work the clinic does in the community.

Tomorrow we'll bring at least one camera so we can get a few pictures and we have some 'before' & and 'after' illustrations. Andrew leaves us tomorrow to go on a research trip to Kigali and then to Gomah. He's collecting information to write a grant for AGLI and will be gone for maybe two weeks. We'll miss him very much but look forward to many stories of his travels- he's going by himself, a recipe for adventure if ever there was one.

N'ahejo! (See you tomorrow!)

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