I am in Morrumbala, a town close to the Malawi border, just north of the mighty Zambezi River and I was asked to go build a house. A big house. Big enough to house 48 kids! I think I this trip has the dubious honor of being the trip with the longest delay in leaving – by about 3 weeks!
At first our team was 2 missionaries, 1 Landrover, a flatbed truck, and me. Then 2 missionaries gave me 1 week’s notice of leaving for America…
Then the team was 1 missionary, 1 Mozambican builder, no vehicle, and me. Then builder was told he had to stay in Pemba do finish his projects and the missionary went to South Africa for his visa…
Then the team was 1 missionary, 1 Mozambican foreman, 1 Landrover and me. The night before we leave I am told that I cannot be the only girl and the missionary may not drive, so I have to get a Mozambican driver and another girl!
Anton, Travis and I
But all was well and the team that finally left Pemba at 4:45am on Thursday morning was: 2 Missionaries (Travis and Octavia), 1 Mozambican foreman (Antonio), 1 Mozambican driver (Baros), 1 Landrover and Me (Nikki).
The drive down was great. I love road trips and Mozambique is a fun place to drive, with huge holes to dodge! The first day we drove to Mocuba – give or take 850km from Pemba. Last time I drove that road it was terrible. There were huge ruts in the road, so deep that you had to balance your wheels on the little ‘mountains’ else you’d be stuck if your wheel went into a ‘valley’ – they are busy repairing the road and its mostly solid packed dirt and tar. It was wonderful!!!
We got to Mocuba at about 5pm and finally found rooms at the 3rd guesthouse we tried (the 1st one had hot running water, the 2nd one had cold running water) this one had no running water, but has employees who constantly keep the huge buckets in the bathrooms filled with water (cold water!)
The next morning we set off at about 9am – arrived in Morrumbala at 2pm and immediately we went to see where we were going to build. There was a dilapidated little house that Iris had build for the orphans earlier, but it was made out of sandstone and the roof was all but missing and the social welfare had said that it was not good for the kids to live there (have they looked around at where the other people live?!?) so it had to be a proper house and apparently they have to have beds too… I priced 24 bunk beds and 48 mattresses in Quelimane and the total came to US$9000. I kid you not. $9000. Are these people crazy? The house I’m building is only $4000! So do they want the kids to sleep on beds outside or on grass mats inside? No one else sleeps on beds. Oh well, I think we found a carpenter who would build us the beds for $730, so now I am hoping to get cheaper mattresses.
The house we demolished
Anyways, back to the building: We had to demolish the little house and that was fun, we got 3 guys to smash the walls! Then I designed the house – about 16m long, 8.5m wide, with 8 rooms, each being 4m x 3.5m with a corridor down the middle. It will have a tin roof and a front door, each room has a window, and curtains in the doorways. The floors will be dirt. So that is the plan if the money stretches that far. First we are going to build just the 4 outside walls and put on a roof. Then if there is money left over we will do the corridor and rooms, and if there is more money, the floor will be cement. But we will see what happens.
Because Iris didn’t have a flatbed truck to spare we have to hire one and its expensive! We need lots of rock, sand, and bricks – there is no big shop to go buy from – we drive into the village and go to people’s houses where they bake clay bricks in their backyards. But the quality varies and the sizes too – so after we had bought 4000 bricks of one size from one guy we ran out and we had to search the entire area to find bricks of the same size!
Then we have to go far out to a quarry in the mountains and buy loads of rock, driving over treacherous tire popping terrain (well the tread on the truck’s tire was non-existent so I don’t think it took too much to pop it – I had to drive out there to bring them an equally worn spare tire!)
The water we get from a tap about 3km down the road, through a muddy field the car couldn’t go thru - we had to buy 20L bottles and then we got 3 girls to help us – they filled the bottles and carried it on their heads to the Landrover. We could only fit about 8 bottles in the back per trip… after a day of me going to and from the tap we struck a deal with a guy – he would fill the 2 huge pots we had (500L each) at night, using his bicycle to carry 40L at a time.
Next we needed wood – this was my favorite part - I could drive at least 20mins into the bush bush, middle of nowhere, sometimes just a footpath to get to a man’s house where he chops down trees and makes 2x4s! Many times it was a person that someone knew and then we’d drive, see them next to the road, pick them up and go to their house – more often than not their assurances of ‘its very close’ meant that it could be 25kms into the bush and take us an hour to get there! But it was great fun, I loved it – going up rocky hills in the Landrover, dodging rocks and holes, literally going where no car has gone before to stop at a little mud hut on a hill, overlooking mountains and there I was, buying a few of the 80 planks of wood we used!
The workers were another story – they are charging us at least double the going rate for manual labour! But then again we are working everyday 6am – 5:30pm… with only an hour for lunch and they are working very hard (with much encouragement from Antonio and I of course – I’d see them jump up back to work whenever the Landrover came around the corner!)
We started digging the foundation on Sunday – with the trucks going to and fro constantly. We hired 2 trucks – we pay per load so might as well get everything quicker for the same price!
Monday we filled the foundation with rocks and cement, and made sure it was all level. In all honesty, I don't do any of the actual building work - I mainly drive to buy stuff – I have all the money with me in cash, and I need to account for every centavos spent, so I go everywhere! The workers do all the work, although I did help fill some rocks in the foundation!
Tuesday we packed the first row of bricks, to raise the floor. We have used 25 bags of cement already! The shop is in the market, with roads not made for cars, but I squeezed the Landrover in there – and made a 12-point u-turn in the small dead-end to get the car out – always fun!
We could buy pretty much everything in Morrumbala, except wheelbarrows or shovels. So we had to beg and borrow shovels off neighbors. We found a guy with a wheelbarrow and we have to rent it from him, so we are sorted with that – but my number 1 tip for anyone wanting to do this kinda thing: BRING YOUR OWN TOOLS! And my number 2 tip is: BRING YOUR OWN FLATBED TRUCK! And my number 3 tip is: Have a good foreman, one that speaks Portuguese, English and the local dialect. We have one and he is amazing!
I am filming this whole trip, and I plan to make a little short DVD – maybe it will raise funds for us to do this more often! But I wanted to have a picture of each kid – to I got them to line up, say their name and age, and then I did a 2 second shot of each one. So I’m writing and writing and writing and finally all 48 kids have been filmed. I count the names to make sure we got them all. 1…2…3…10…20…30…40…47…48…49…50! 2 extra, but Pastor Sabala, the man who is looking after them says that those are all the kids! He doesn’t have food to feed them, so I went out and bought 10kg of corn, they will grind it and make ‘shima’ (maize porridge/ meilie pap) for the kids. And I plan to leave each kid 10kg of corn, like we did when I went on the food distribution outreach a few months ago.
I also got a list of veggies that would grow well here – the land we are buying will be big enough for them to have a little farm to grow food for the kids. The orphans will have to work it, but it will be good to get food to them! You might have noticed I said ‘the land we are buying’… the land we started building on isn’t actually ours yet – but I am assured that it will be easy to buy it – no worries… I really hope so! We submit the papers tomorrow, and give them about $100.
The building went quite quickly – I think I was pretty ‘slave driverish’, the workers worked 10 hours per day for 12 days, but it was needed – we got the walls done just in time for the roof to go on before we left! (and they were paid double to usual rate!)
The trucks we had hired to deliver the bricks just sped over all the bumps and only towards the end of construction did I realize just how many bricks had broken in the process – 2000! I wasn’t going to hire the trucks again at those astronomical prices only to have ¼ of the bricks break, so I had to drive a 26km round trip to find the right size brick and then the Landrover only had enough space to carry 200 bricks at a time!
It was nearly a week and a half later and the walls were not finished yet – the workers had started getting slack and after we paid 2 of them some of their money so they could buy food for their families, one guy stopped showing up. In desperation to get the walls done I put out word that we needed more workers, I will pay them a fixed amount for each wall they complete – we got 3 guys, 1 was excellent, the other 2 worked slow and then moaned about the wage. Then the guy we hired to carry water for us every night decided he wanted to be paid and after I gave him his pre-agreed wage he was unhappy because he had jumped into the Landrover every time we went to get wood and he had expected me to pay him extra for his help. I should have known that no one does anything out of the goodness of their hearts here in Africa. The next morning there was no water, the waterman was ‘tired’ so we got 10 ladies to walk to the hand pump and get us water – we paid them 0.07cents for every 20L bottle they carried… don’t be shocked, that was the payment THEY asked for!
Then I had a look at what the carpenters were doing – they seemed OK, showing up early, and working hard throughout the day. Our deal had been that they would make us 8 beds. 8 special beds – each bed measuring 3.6m x 1.9m (that is big enough to fit 4 mattresses next to each other). We had drawn them pictures with measurements and settled on a price. They worked out the amount of wood we needed and I went off in search of it (there was a lumber yard of sorts close by, but the wood was for export so the prices were stupid – each plank cost $8 instead of the $1.75 I could pay in the bush). They made the beds and finally when they assembled the parts I went to look. They had decided that 3.6m was too wide so they made me 8 beds that were 1.8m wide instead. And then they demanded payment for the beds, but payment for 16 beds and not just for 8. It took nearly 5 hours to reach a compromise, and in the end I paid more than I had wanted to and they received less than they demanded. But I was furious. I had tried to work out the best way for all the kids to sleep off the floor on a mattress, and seeing that I couldn’t afford a mattress or a bed per child, I had made a plan and the carpenters had just messed it all up. It was 2 days before we left and there wasn’t time (or money) to have another 8 double beds made. So we had to put one bed in each room and 2 of the mattresses on the floor. It was horrible, I was so disappointed because I really wanted all the kids to sleep on a bed, even if they had to share it would still be better than the floor.
The house as seen from the side/back:
The house as seen from the front:
But it was all worth it - when the house was done and we were getting ready to leave the site for the last time, all the kids came together and started singing, then we opened the door and in great excitement they all ruched in, singing and dancing and cheering and it was so so so moving. All the frustration was worth it!
This is something that I would REALLY LOVE TO DO AGAIN! I think there are 40 more places waiting for houses… now Iris just needs the funding to get us there to build!
A list of things you need to build a house for 50 kids:
86 wooden planks 300cm x 24cm = $264
140 wooden poles 3cm x 6cm x 300cm = $213
10 150 bricks = $383
10 truckloads of sand = $38
84 sheets of tin roofing = $620
3700kg cement = $731
7400 liters of water = $28
5 truckloads of rock = $94
28kg of nails = $127
the equivalent of 66 workers = $732
Truck hire for 25 loads = $528
Mattresses for the kids = $1509
The Land = $328
Seeds for vegetable garden = $20
Food for Kids = $83
And of course, 1 Nikki = priceless! ;-)
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