House visiting

Today we visited two families homes in Debre Berhan. The first was Warko and Asalefs home which is in the town. Warko has been working with us at the site every day since we have got here however yesterday his wife Asalef replaced him. They have been waiting for 4 years to get a Habitat house. They will get one within the next few months - it will be one of the ones we have been working on this week. They are paying 150birr rent on their current house.. Which is just over £4 a month. The house is a small room - with 2 beds. There at 3 children which means 5 people share this one room. They don't have a kitchen or bathroom - there is a communal kitchen in the area but Asalef told us that it is very dirty especially in winter. There is no communal toilet. Seeing this house was really difficult for us all. On leaving Aimee gave the 2 sons 2 football kits and the daughter nail polish - they gave us the tightest hugs. It was very emotional for everyone leaving this home, and although we know that Warko and his family will be getting a house, it's still upsetting to know that thousands of other families will live this way all of their lives. 

The next home we visited was at the site. It brightened up everyone's spirits as it was a Habitat house. The family have been living in it for just over a year now and it is beautiful. They have even extended out the back to make a kitchen, toilet and extra bedroom for the wife's sister. At the front they grow carrots potatoes and onions, and they own some sheep. We could see the dramatic change in living conditions, and how a families income will prove once they participate in a building programme with Habitat. 

It's Chica time....

Today was a messy one. We used Chica... We basically had to throw it at the walls of a house that had it's foundations, roofs and wooden structure complete. The process was so fun - although at the same time it required a lot of strength to keep throwing. Louise 'accidentally' kept missing her wall and getting Sharon's back instead too!!!

We had a bit of a sing-song with the locals when doing the Chica - it was hilarious... They loved Gary's dancing!!! It took all morning for us to get the Chica on the house complete.. The locals will now need to wait around 5 days to put another layer on.. Then the next stage is concrete.

We then split into 2 groups to work on the toilets that we had concreted two days previously - it was great to see how it was coming along. During lunch Jim showed some of the local workers some of his family and friends in his photo album - they really enjoyed looking at the photographs and hearing about his life

After lunch we returned to the houses we have been mainly working on all week. We used bark from the trees to tie the wooden sticks together which was an amazing technique - we were very surprised at how strong it was. Again we all went our seperate ways and worked on what needed to be done. Asnaka one of the locals ensured that we always had something to do and kept the praise going which motivated everyone. 

To finish of the day we had Jims quiz - it got very competitive in the end... However there could only be one winning team - much to Sharon's disappointment.. (Jim gave her a pity medal in the end ;) )

Teamwork

It was an early 6am start for the team members missing their bags this morning as they travelled the 2hour journey to the airport and bag in order to eventually get their bags!!!!!! An achievement to everyone surviving 6 days on hand luggage - but they were delighted to see their stuff and are currently embracing the amount of clean clothes they have to wear!! They talked about their journey however and said that the drive through the city was pretty sad for them.. They saw a lot of sick, disabled and homeless people, and it really hit home how poor some people in this area really are. When driving past the farms on the road - one tractor was seen, the rest of the work was being carried out by human labour.. Which is pretty uncommon now in the western world.

The other team members helped to cement a new toilet this morning - this involved carrying a lot of soil and stones which was quite heavy from one end of the site to another - then helping with the mixing of these with the water and cement mix which was tough labour. We were all shocked by the process as we are used to seeing cement mixer machines at home to do all this for us. The rest of the team got to the site at lunchtime and we then moved back to the houses we have been working on for the past few days. We filled foundations with stones for another house then everyone participated in various tasks with the locals - hammering, sawing, moving stones. The main thing about our work is teamwork - we all have to work together in order to get things done - As you can see from the pic below!!

It was a good day and it was great to take a step back and observe the progress that has been made since we got here.. The thing is that we all are aware that even if we weren't here the locals would be working away - they are so skilled. We took a little break today and the local women taught us some dancing which was fun!

There were double celebrations tonight - firstly getting the bags back and secondly Brighdin got her a-level results - she did brilliant and got into her university course!!!!! Tomorrow we will be working on the Chica for some of the houses which we are definitely looking forward too!