Wednesday 6/15/2008- 6/25/2008
The plan was to meet our Habitat for Humanity team at the airport in Maputo. The taxi driver offered to drop us off there for 100 rand. The 200 km trip from Manzini only cost 120 rand, so we felt like 100 rand for 4 km was a bit much. We talked him down to 50 rand and then headed to the airport. When we arrived inside, Dermot spotted a man with a Habitat for Humanity polo shirt on and introduced himself. It turns out that only 2 of our team members had arrived. We introduced ourselves to Lee and Jamie who had been in the airport for a couple of hours. After chatting with them for a while, we decided to go grab some lunch. The airport had free internet, so we used it to call home and wish Dermot’s sister Jen a happy birthday and to wish our father’s a happy father’s day. Before we knew it, Jamie came upstairs and let us know that more members were arriving and we were getting ready to go. We met Alex and Amanda, but Jack and Brigitte had missed their flight from Jo’burg to Maputo, so we take the bus to our project site without them.
We met the Habitat director for our project at the airport. His name was Magaia and arranged our transport to the village we would be working. We picked rooms (there was a boy dorm, a girl dorm and then a dorm for the mother and son who were on our trip), settled in and then got ready for dinner. During dinner Allison and Miles arrived. They had a bit of an adventure as their transportation did not now exactly where the habitat accommodation was located, so they took a scenic drive around most of Massaca trying to find it. Jack and Brigette eventually arrived around 10:30 p.m. after most of us had already gone to bed. We had all arrived safely, though, and went to bed ready to get up at 6:00 a.m. the next morning.
We all managed to drag ourselves out of bed and eat breakfast before 7:30 .a.m. We then had a quick briefing from Magaia and broke up into two teams to get started on work. Dermot, Katie, Jamie, Allison and Alex formed one team, while Jack, Miles, Lee, Brigette and Amanda formed the other. We arrived at our sites and got to work. First we had to dig out the basic foundation. This consisted of digging out 16 holes that were 20 cm deep. We then filled the area around them with loose rocks, mixed up some cement by hand and then made a ring of cinder blocks to stacks high around the foundation. While half the team did this, the other half of the team cuts large poles that would act as supports for the walls and then bang nails into them to act as rebar when the poles are set in cement. The poles were then set in the 20 cm deep holes, and then we plastered the cinder blocks and floor to give it a nice finish. The pictures will give you a good idea of what the work was like, it is hard to describe it in words.
Most of our day was spent mixing cement as it is a laborious task, but doesn’t take a lot of skill. It was perfect for people like us who wanted to help, but did not want to get in the way on the tasks that created more skills. It was very hard work and usually left us feeling pretty sore at the end of the day, but we really enjoyed it. At the end of the day, we would come home, try to be the first to get to the cold water showers to clean up and then come back out to the common area to play cards, have a drink, read or do something else to pass the time as we waited for dinner. Dinner was always good and included rice or potatoes with vegetables and some sort of fish or meat. We also always had delicious freshly baked Portuguese rolls with dinner. After dinner we would go back to the common area and play a game that Jack brought called Apples to Apples….which customs tried to make him pay taxes for, since they were sure he planned to sell it when he arrived. It was a fun game to play with a large group and it helped us get to know each other. We usually then head to bed some time between 9:00 and 10:00 and do it all over again.
Most of our days continued like this. We would rotate the teams a bit and get more tasks to do, like building the walls out of reed. We worked Monday-Wednesday. On Thursday it rained all day, so we could not work. Magaia took us around to the schools and clinic to meet more of the locals. We learned that cholera was a large epidemic. We then worked again on Friday when the weather improved. After the huge rain storm, we learned that there were 45 new cases of Cholera, so we were all on high alert. Saturday was our day off and the group decided that after going to a two year old’s birthday party in the village that we’d head into Maputo. We’d go to the craft fairs, eat dinner and then head to a music club to see our team leader’s (Magaia) band perform. Magaia had an excellent voice and tons of energy on stage, so it was fun to see him perform. After the music club the remaining team members decided to go to a disco called Coconuts. As Dermot put it, “This is my own personal hell”. The clientele consisted of mostly 16-22 year old people who enjoyed loud music and dancing very close to one another. It was amusing to travel back in time to our youths, but after 2 hours of the club we were all ready to go home. We got home around 4 a.m. (our latest night out in a long time) and slept until 11 a.m. the next morning.
Sunday was a lazy day for sure. We woke up, watched a local soccer match down the street and ate. That was pretty much all we did all day.
Monday was back to work day. We got back into our schedule of breakfast – ride to work in the back of a pickup truck - back breaking work – tea break – more back breaking work – lunch – a little bit more of tough work – ride home in the back of a pickup truck – shower – eat dinner – play board games and talk – go to bed routine. The only difference to our routine was that Allison and Miles had to leave the trip a little bit early because they had something they needed to return home for in the USA. We missed their presence at dinner that night and for the rest of the week. We realized that we all had become close in the 10 days that we knew each other.
Tuesday we only worked a ½ day and then attended the dedication ceremony where all the people who received the houses we built joined us in a celebration to thank us for our donations and hard work. After the ceremony we ate lunch and then returned to our work sites where we frantically finished putting up the walls on our houses so that we could put the roofs on the houses before the sunset. We put both roofs on just as the sun completely set. It was a very happy and poignant moment for the entire group to lift the roofs together and put the finishing touches on our work throughout the week. We got home ate dinner and then went right to bed, because we were exhausted from our full day of work. We also had to get up at 5 a.m. the next morning so that we could get to the airport in time for our flight to Inahca island.
We took a mini bus taxi to the airport Wednesday morning. We arrived to the airport a bit early, so we had a chance to get some stuff done on the internet before boarding our chartered flight to Inacha Island.