by Tuliza Sindi
Abby and Kiana, with
Frans's bakkie, took charge of collecting sand for the concrete and mortar mix.
A weak battery proved quite problematic, as many times the truck needed a push
start, sometimes while loaded with sand.
As Yolandi, Tialise
and I went to Kliptown's Pick n Pay to
get food supplies, Corobrick very
kindly arrived with a delivery of 3000 bricks (with their own transport). The jungle gym, which was stored at Frank Maparas' place overnight, was brought back and in
no time, the hall was encumbered with curious and excited children that not
only saw the play potential in the playground, but also in the building sand.
They remained with us until the end of the day.
When lunchtime
arrived, we took turns to eat at Frank's, so that we could have a couple of
people remain at Slovo Hall to watch over the building materials.
As Frank and Mohau,
along with several other community members, set out and marked a straight line
for the East wall, they realized that the third column from the north wall
sticks out further east than the other columns. To avoid the wall possibly
being built further than the roof edge, they decided to use an angle grinder to
saw off the bottom of that column, and anchor it into the wall by building
around it.
One of the day's
highlights was the arrival of the generator, supplied by David. This brought
much joy, as a generator proved quite difficult to organise. David said he
simply didn't know we needed one, but that he had an unused working generator
at his mother's house.
While Yolandi went to
collect the brick force and oil for the generator, the boys were assigned the
task of breaking the rough screed with mallets, to smoothen the floor surface
in the Hall for the walls.
As the day's end came,
I left with the hopes that we'll find our building materials all there the next
day.
Photos by Clare Hughes