Building Site

Progress on the camp pavilion is painfully slow but the structure is going up little by little everyday. The foundation walls and footings have been laid and the floor leveled. Seventeen teak posts are in the ground. For those who may wonder, we don't use teak to be extravagant. We use it because it's strong and it's the locally available building material of choice among the Lozi. Each teak pole costs about $3 USD. The bond beam (they call it a "ring beam" here) is almost finished. It is made up of seventeen beams running horizontally from post to post all around the perimeter of the structure. Four beams still need to be added and then it will be complete. The earth bag wall that separates the kitchen from the showers/bathroom area is almost finished. When we stand on it the bond beam (which is about nine-and-a-half feet up in the air) it is about waist high. One more hard day and I think we'll have it done. After that we will start on teak cross beams. Then teak king posts. Then mopani ridge poles and rafters. The last step before thatching will be to add small sticks called "lats" that will span between rafters and run parallel with the top of the wall. The bundles of thatch will be tied to the "lats". Vincent, our "foreman", is supposed to have a crew working on the storage room walls of the pavilion so that it will be finished when we get back. He needs monitoring so this could be interesting leaving him alone to manage this part. He's using the traditional Lozi building method called kukangala (adobe mud packed around a stick frame "matrix" - also referred to in England as waddle and daub).

A quick note about Vincent. He is very pleasant to work with. He's responsible, faithful, intuitive and shows initiative. I think he's a keeper. We continue to pray that the Lord will truly save him. It's possible that his heart has already been made new and he is trusting in Christ alone for salvation but just doesn't know how to express it in words.

So the Lord gave us a good gift the other day. Sean and I took Vincent with us to a place between Mwandi and Kazangula to see if we could buy some Mopani poles that I had seen in huge piles on the side of the highway. After driving two-and-a-half hours we were told that the man who owned them was building a lodge in Livingstone and was not willing to sell. I was praying and asking the Lord to help my attitude because it seemed that the whole trip was a waste. One of the old women suggested that we try to phone the man and, after a while provided his number. We took the old woman with us to where we could find a network signal. As it turned out we ran into a man who had cut all the trees for the guy building the lodge. He took us way out into the bush (30 more minutes) to his pile of poles out in the forest. He sold them to us for K 5,000 per pole which is about $1 per pole. To put that in perspective... these poles are at least twelve feet long and at least six inches in diameter, the strength of teak and the color of pine. Vincent was shocked at the quality of the wood and the low price. That made us feel pretty good about it. It was also a great testimony for him to see the Lord provide. It was a long day - Twelve hours altogether. But it was worth it. We pulled into camp at nine p.m. that night
with 25 poles. Hopefully we can get 50 more from this same guy.

The rains have started but we are praying that we can be moved into this by Christmas! Thank you for continuing to pray.