Our first day of build week commenced yesterday. We arrived
in Slovo Park at 9:45AM. The JCP students from the University of Pretoria were
dropped off at Frank Maparas, not knowing what they have gotten themselves
into. Starting off by unpacking the store room, we realise that there is not
much we can do, as we have almost no materials. Abby went to Takolias Hyper
Hardware, and bought gloves, cement, sheeting, paint brushes and sand paper. We
are extremely grateful for our generous discount. On site, the steel windows
are being prepared for installation while Tuliza and Clare visit the
surrounding homes to collect tools, quite successfully. Tiles on the western and eastern sides were removed to accommodate the seating walls to be built Kiana and I, together
with Julia, the lady who will be cooking for us for the week, headed to PicknPay
in Kliptown for some basic groceries in order to feed the hard working team.
Some of the community members are selflessly helping out, but we are hoping for
more volunteers on Wednesday.
We had a few minor injuries; luckily we came prepared with a mini medi-kit.
Preparations were done but most of the work is postponed as
we are waiting for materials, transport and feedback. Tuesday looks promising.
Bricks to be delivered at 12:00, sand to be delivered too. Transport was
organised to fetch supplies from Rustenburg, and Omar found a jungle gym which
we are aiming to fix up and install.
The day ended with a much needed hot plate of Pap and
Chicken livers and at 22:00PM we were off to bed.Photos by Ingmar Büchner