Day 4, Day 3 of the House Build

Today two of the team (Mary, Jen) were offered the opportunity of spending time with the GGA crèche and a local pre-school whilst the remaining team members commenced work as usual, but this time on African time (7:30am). It was a welcome lie in.

First activity of the day was the removal of a cement mixer from the back of a lorry.This nearly ended the life of half of the group which was the kick start that the team needed to wake up and prepare for a hard days graft on site.

Being led by our fearless project manager (Stumpy) we reached site and began to unload a new load of blocks (200 No) and 20 50kg cement bags. The team made light work of this load and cracked on to building the house to its 6th course. This was all before lunch!!!

Meanwhile in the local pre-school both Mary and Jen were educating, entertaining and generally teaching children aged from 3 to 6 year olds. Despite having to lay down the law a few times they have said that this was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable tasks they have carried out this trip so far. Anne and Sarah are to carry out the same task tomorrow…. Good Luck!

Back on site. The team were relentless in their blocklaying and people started to find their niche skills; Wayne was the mortar mixing guru, Anne and Sarah (…and Matthew) the pointing queens, Nigel the blocklaying genius, George the block cutting mad man and everybody else was given a 5 star for effort….

The day ended (5pm) with a load of 500 blocks being delivered and unloaded by our courageous crew and despite our unenthusiastic African counterparts we managed to load them out in under 30 minutes. Heroic effort! Home time.

After a long and hard day we should have been going to bed but instead our audacious team decided to go and soak up a little of the Durban culture. After a beautiful meal it was three drinks, two sea swims and one enjoyable (inebriated) ride home.

In retrospect tomorrow is going to be a hard day…