I would give my entire kingdom for...

Here is a young girl who helps care for the child of one of our nurses.  She is always on site with the baby strapped to her back bouncing it around and playing with it.  She saw me headed out to take pictures of the site work and asked I take one of her.  I barely got the baby in the picture too because it was so low on her back.

How does the old saying go-I would give my entire kingdom for …

Well this week it would be for some really good screws.  This week I finished up painting the buildings we built late last year.  I had finished the inside last year before I left but still had the outside to do this year.  It took four good coats of the oil based paint to get a good protective coating.  The picture below is of the bathroom with the first three coats.  There are still some areas after three coats caused by the roughness of the concrete that requires going over it one last time to make sure I got it all. 

The problems encountered this painting experience is that it is very windy right now which makes the temperature very pleasant (I would say low 80s most of the week) it also scatters the paint on the paintbrush because the oil based paint here has the viscosity of water.  It is like trying to take your hand and scoop up water and carry it 10 feet to put it in a container.  Every time I wipe the brush of excess paint, the wind blows and there goes some of the non-excess paint streaming off.

While I have never been a lover of the painting job, over the years I have grown fond of the mind numbing simplicity of the work of actually slapping paint on a surface.  Normally I spend about 4 hours a day and then spend the rest of the day on other activities while it dries.  The other unfortunate side effect of oil based paint is that it stays tacky to the touch for about 14 hours even in dry conditions.

One of the afternoon activities has been trying to hang the doors.  I realize I may have told you the part about the screws not working here before.  Originally I thought it was because the screws were too long or not hardened.  So I ordered some hardened shorter screws to attempt the work.  Again after about a half inch into the wood the screw head would just snap all the sudden.  Remember, no electric driver or drill to drive the screw it is just me against the wood.  I originally tried to drill pilot holes for the screws but after I broke all the drill bits, I went to nails instead driving them in and removing them to create pilot holes.  This yielded the same results as before except that all my nails are now bent as well.  Of course most have a slight curve to them when I bought them new.

It appears I have to use a roofing type nail to attach the hinges to the frame.  Something I would normally never, I mean it, never would do.  But this seems to be my last resort.

Another activity for the afternoon was to spread gravel out at all the water discharge points around the site.  We have been slowly working to establish some erosion control methods.  The first part was to grow grass and develop a root field in the area where a lot of the damage occurred.  This both slowed the water down some but also prevented damage in these areas as the roots of the grass held the soil together.  During some of our construction last year, I also put in some water collection and diversion pipes and trenches.  These have done a good job of collecting and diverting surface runoff water in the areas of some of the new construction.  So recently I got some “grave” and used it to create a bed of aggregate to discharge the energy from the water as It leaves the collection and diversion system before it comes into contact with soil. 

The interesting thing about the gravel around here is it starts as big rocks (yes I know that is how it normally starts but how it changes is different) that a family, a couple of women or a couple of kids will sit around a couple of hours a day and beat with something like a piece of pipe or maybe even a makeshift hammer.  They will normally do this for months to creat 1” pieces of gravel used for various work.  The men normally pick up the rocks and transport them to somebody who is willing to pay for them.  It is amazing that my cart of rocks, about 1 cubic yard, is priced at 60,000 Shillings or about 31 dollars.

Everybody is busy around here taking advantage of late rains to plant small gardens in hopes of some crops this year to feed their families.  I myself hope to plant a small garden early next week and use the rainwater harvesting systems to grow it through the year.

My Moringa tree I have been watering with waste water from my kitchen is now over 3 feet in height.  According to the strongharvest website which has a ton of information about these trees, it is actually time to harvest my tree.  Considering how quickly it has grown since December, I can only imagine what it would be like if I don’t cut it down some.

Lastly, I had a treat this week.  Last weekend was the peace corp game weekend in Singida and one of the ladies from the group told me she had baked bread and wanted to go in on a block of cheese to eat with the bread.  So I went and picked it up-frozen solid as always.  A small block is about $12 US.  Because I was not able to get it until the morning we needed it, I wrapped it in the plastic bag and put it between my back and the backpack and walked around town until it was no longer frozen.  Fortunately we did not need it until 3 PM so it had about 5 hours to thaw.  The bread and cheese was great, but the treat came with the small chunk that was left.  I made my own version of macaroni and cheese.  I used some elbow noodles I found in town and made a sauce of milk (using powdered milk), white grape vinegar, the cheese shredded and a little bit of flour. 

It was delicious.