Interesting times

Hey everybody, we are hitting interesting times here in Manzamnyama village. Aidan has successfully fixed the beetle while I was away at a conference, so finally we've got wheels again! Which means, we can drive to the city and buy matierials again. (Allthough the guys at the hardware store looked a bit puzzled when we told them to load the 3 bags of cement into the beetle ..) Last week we were in Mthatha to buy stuff again: black piping, electric cable for the water pump (that was donated to the project by Jenny and Earle Lawrence, thankyouverymuch!), light switches and fittings and bulbs, a new spade, a big shear for gardening, cement and some other small things. The villagers have been helpful these last few weeks and build some bricks up at the hilltop. Now we only need building sand - we are still waiting for the guys with the donkeys to bring it from the river - and then we can actually start putting up the first building! I'm so excited! But that's not all the good news. The last meeting with the project committee was also very fruitful. Not only were we informed that the thatching we ordered will soon be ready, but, they also found a translator for us! We wouldn't have thought it possible any more, so it came as a big - and very pleasant - surprise. Babalwa, a 22 year old girl from the village, will work with us from today onwards, 5 days a week. She will act as our translator, teach us Xhosa and just generally help with whatever we are doing at the moment. I'm sure it will facilitate our interaction with the village a lot.

We are doing quite ok with funding at the moment, friends and family from Switzerland are helping out, but anyone is welcome to donate to the project. This blog will be kept updated weekly with info and photos, so that you can see directly where your money goes. Every help is highly appreciated! You can make a difference right now. We still need funding for bigger things like several water tanks, solar panels and stuff like that. 

Today Aidan was setting up the pump - our little generator can just about power it - and installing pipes from the treehouse up to the hilltop, to connect all our dams. Right now only the dam at the bottom - at the treehouse - is full of water, because we can fill it through the pipe that comes from the spring. But to get that water up to the hilltop, where the lodge is, we need the pump, and that's what was set up today. It's working!

Photos: bottom dam, just above the treehouse, putting the plastic in, filling it from spring, and using the water!

fixing the beetle

This week we are busy fixing the beetle. As the landrover broke down too, we are now completely without wheels, and it's very annoying. We rely on local taxis or the Bulungula shuttle, and we can't go on like that forever. So, the cars need to be fixed. The beetle was towed up to Mpame Store last week, and this week we were busy taking the old engine out, taking it apart completely, transfer all the good parts to the replacement engine (that also needs to be taken apart first), putting it all back together, and then get the fixed engine back into the car and hope that it starts. We're not quite finished yet, and we don't know if that thing is acutally going to start. Let's hope the best ... wish us luck!

digging out the spring

clearing and digging out the spring to make it deeper ... it's our resource of drinking water

some photos ...

our garden before the cow attack ...

 

high security zone

wow, it's been a while since this blog has been updated, sorry, we were quite busy here. Things have been going slow until now, it took a lot of time and effort to motivate the village to actually join in and volunteer their help to build anything. About two weeks ago I got really angry at a meeting and told them that they need to get their act together or this is never going to work. That without their help, it might take months on end to build that Lodge, but WITH their help in can be done in several weeks! We also handed over some funding to the committee, to use as they see fit, and explained what we need: building materials such as cement, poles, nails, thatching, bricks ... and there is only little money and it needs to go a long way. My getting angry, and us handing over some money, seemed to have done the trick. Shortly afterwards, some women appeard on the hilltop and started digging up the topsoil, to make bricks. Since then, more and more villagers come to help, and today we counted a total of 34 people working on the hilltop!! That's fantastic, we're very pleased with the new turn this whole thing is taking. The project has stood still for too long - for lack of funding and lack of help from the village. Thanks to some funding from friends in Switzerland, we could finally buy some materials again, and mobilize the workforce - and suddently things look different. Another reason for the people's sudden willingness to help might also be that the planting and harvesting season is over ... so they have some more time to spare. However, it's all looking very positive for now, and we're happy.

the other problem we had is the spring that supplied us with drinking water. At the end of the harvest, the farmers opend up their fields to the cattle, to let them eat the leftovers and clear the fields. To our dismay, they trampled not only through the fields but also through our spring, that lays between two fields and has therefore not needed a fence so far. Well, things change. When we came back from a weekend in Bulungula, we found our spring to be nothing more than a dirty, foul smelling mud hole. What a heartbreak. So we started fencing it in, with whatever scrap and leftover materials we had, but the cows kept on breaking through it, knocking everything over. Finally, thanks to the swiss funding, we managed to buy barb wire and build a strong fence around the water hole. The place now looksl ike a high security zone, and in fact, that's exactly what it's intended to be. No more destructive cows in there! Unfortunately, the sheep and sneaky goats might still get through, so we will have to make a plan about that. :-)

mmmmmh...mussels!

Yesterday we ran out of canned food, and as our next trip to Mthatha is probably still far off we had to go collect mussels if we didn't want to eat plain rice tonight. These days it's low tide all the time and so the mussel collecting won't be such a problem as it was last time, when we got soaked from head to feet and a big wave almost swept me off the rocks. Besides, it was nice and cloudy and therefore not too hot, so off we went ... down to secret beach and scrambling up the rocks. The mussels grow here in millions and billions! I must actually take my camera next time, it's really quite a sight. In higher regions you find the small ones, and if you want big ones, you need to venture down the rocks to the surface of the water. Only problem is, the waves come splashing in constantly ... and the mussels hold on to the rocks quite stubbornly. So we cling to the rocks, one foot in the water, one hand ripping mussels off, and of course we get wet anyway. This time we collected two shopping bags half full of mussels, which is quite a lot. Then we have to carry them aaaaall the way back up to the hilltop ... and then, you need to steam these things so that they open, and then you crack them open and scratch the fleshy part out, and that stuff you can fry in the end to get it nice and tasty. But scratching all the fleshy parts out takes a hell lot of time ... so if any backpacker decides to have mussels for dinner, make sure you start collecting them around midday, or your dinner might happen after midnight ... At least now I know why mussels are so expensive: not because they are rare, but because to harvest and prepare them just takes too much time! But hey, time we've got plenty here, actually we make a point of having time, and anyway, a tasty mussel dinner is reward enough for all the bother. ;-)

Fetching Poles

Today we will learn how to get poles. It's a quite easy receipe: pack about 10 kids into the landrover, drive to the forest, cut the poles down and drag them back to your place. No kidding. In the Mpame Forest they have plantations for poles, and you just go there and say which ones and how many you want, pay for them (we pay R 1.70 for a 6m gumtree pole) and go cut them down in the section that they tell you. The kids are useful, apparently they like doing that work, cause often we don't even have to ask them if they want to help – they just jump into the landrover by themselves. (Maybe they just want a ride in the landrover and don't know that we're off to the forestry and will make them work ...) Anyway there are some kids that really are very helpful: little Dedisa (don't know if the name is really spelled like that) never misses a chance to be around us, and Sandile is also a very reliable and important helper. So off into the forest they all go, with saws and machetes (don't worry, they know how to handle that stuff), and cut the trees and chop off all the branches. Then we drag them to the landrover, stuff them all in, tie the bundle to the side of the car and drag the whole thing back – with the kids sitting on the pile of poles inside the landrover. I hate the drive back, the landrover creaks and the noise of the poles being dragged over the stoney street drives me mad. I'm always glad when we finally reach our hilltop. There, we unload all the poles and immediately strip the bark off. Like that, they don't only look nicer but also don't get eaten by borabeetles. So that's it ... and with these poles, we built the boma and the new kitchen space and half of our treehouse. Right now we're out of poles again, so we have to fetch more but we're blocked because the landrovers tires are flat – well one was flat, so we put the spare tire on, and now that one's flat too – a kid was playing with it and let all the air out. Arrrgh. Now try to find a pump in this village ... it's impossible. Looks like we'll have to stuff the extra tire into my poor beetle and drive to Mpame to find someone with a pump ... wish us luck!