Regular rain and heavy flooding has had a (dampening..) effect on site progress. The road to site has been more difficult to pass on foot, and site is becoming more bog like. Nevertheless, materials have kept arriving thanks to a good relationship with a local truck driver whilst the workers have taken to a shorter route to work, regardless of the fact it involves taking their pants off and wading across a canal. Despite the regular rain, we still have 30 workers on average toiling away daily, and we continue to move forward.
The window lintels are largely complete on Prenatal, so the windows and doors are now tangible
• Meanwhile another team of masons have started to cement render the administration building, and are producing a very good finish.
• The foundations for education are now complete, which took a little more time due to some different construction strategies required because this is a larger span building.
• The front gate to Second Mile has been completed, allowing the front of the property to be sealed off, whilst the rear has had a line of cactus planted to eventually grow into a barrier there.
We are mixing a huge amount of concrete each week, but the last few weeks have seemed relatively slow, purely down to the sheer amount required. The volunteer engineer partnering remotely from the UK on the project has been very busy, which has slowed down some decision making.
• The water tower foundations have been excavated, but unfortunately have flooded and will need to dry out fully before any further work can take place. The water table has risen after so much rain, making any further excavation very difficult.
• Assuming the rain continues to fall in the late afternoon and evenings, we should be able to maintain progress. We hope to get to a point where we can start the Prenatal roof later this week or right at the beginning of next week.
• The water table being so high means no further buildings will be excavated as we need the soil to dry out to some extent.
• The education walls and columns should move pretty fast now we have the foundations cast, we hope to arrive at eaves level by the end of the week.