Day 9 - Defying Gravity

There were quite a few very high profile tasks that were completed today that made a huge impact in terms of the overall progress of the project. The first of these was to lift the water tanks up onto the plinth that was cast a few days ago. Mr Smith approached this in the same manner as all these seemingly impossible task, employing techniques that would have been used in the construction of the pyramids. There were plenty of people looking on muttering ‘it’ll never work’, but of course it did. Someone else could be heard shouting ‘we’ve got to put this on YouTube’, but that’s tomorrow’s job!

Although everything stopped for this exciting moment, before and after many boys were involved in digging the drainage trench for the waste water. This involved a considerable amount of back-breaking work and kept a hard core of people occupied all day. Once dug, they then had to fill it in with rocks and hard core left over from the concrete.

With the water tanks moved into position it was possible to partially fill them and test the washing, showering and kitchen systems for leaks. Of course there were plenty of them, but it didn’t take long to find and sort most of them out. Although not caught on camera, Mr Griffiths reported that the cook could not believe it when the tap in her kitchen, benign for so many years, suddenly began to pour forth water; she danced, she screamed and she started hitting him!

The major job that needed to be completed today was to get the solar panels fitted permanently to the roof. The brief for this was quite tough; they needed to catch the sun, be sloped to allow rain and dust to run off and be completely hidden from outside parties for security purposes. We had discussed various options for several days but in the end adopted the design put forward by your narrator. For the mathematicians amongst you it was an inverted wing in the shape of a trapezium that would rest on the two inwardly sloping roofs. It had been our intention originally to weld this together but in the end the frame was made entirely from steel tubing bolted together. The construction took all day and in the end we wrestled it onto the roof (another feat of gravity defying proportions akin to the water tanks earlier in the day) in the semi-darkness of dusk (yet again!) We all stood back and admired our handiwork though as it did indeed fulfil the brief.

The boys worked very hard today so tomorrow we are having a morning off and taking them to Arusha market.