Sunday, October 17, 2010

World Habitat Day

Last weekend a number of PCVs and I went to help out at World Habitat Day. A former Peace Corps Volunteer from here in Lesotho (Lorian) finished her service in May or so and took a position with Habitat for Humanity Lesotho. We caught a ride out there around 8:30, stopped for some snacks and showed up in the village around 10.

There were three tents set up around the village’s soccer field and people were running around finishing setup and getting organized. We circled around the swag to get our shirts and then were put to work trying to get banners, which are meant for the indoors, to stand up to 25 mph gusts outdoors. The light-weight aluminum clearly was not meant to work as a mast, and I eventually chose laying down the banners on the ground in favor of them getting bent or ripped. I was later openly mocked by other volunteers when an industrious Mosotho used a guy wire from one of the tents to put up the banners. Oh well. Maybe my oft-used claim of "having degrees in this" should be curtailed a bit.

We moved on from the banners to mull around for a while, then a commotion erupted when John rode up on his horse and velvet riding helmet and flip flops (no spurs). "Rode" might be the wrong word. I think it was more of a prance. All in all it was very cute. He later gave pony rides to some local kids, which was a highlight of the day for them no doubt.

Eventually we all got organized, the Minister of Natural Resources showed up and got some face time with the TV cameras and we moved off to our project houses. The house we were working on was mostly complete, we were there to just finish up a few tasks. Interior plastering and painting were the tasks available, so I took up a trowel and did my best. After 5 minutes my arms ached and plaster was sloppily applied to a 1 square foot area. It had certainly been a while since I’d done manual labor, and plastering is not as easy as it looks. Turns out it's heavy and sticky. Who knew?

45 minutes later or so about half of my wall was plastered and a blister was forming on my hand. A few minutes earlier the Minister had made his way into the house and was charming the workers. He picked up a trowel and put in some time on a few walls before ducking out to another appearance somewhere else. It was great to see such good press come out to an important charity. There wasn't too much excitement in the day, but it was fun to get out and work on something that had a clear change from the beginning of the day to the end. There are some pictures of the day below.


These horses had some great burlap sack capes on. They looked like they were the kings of the village.


There was a big turnout for the event. Probably a couple hundred people.



This guy had an impressive homemade Hobbit hat on. I don't think his feet were big enough or hairy enough to pull off the whole look.



These are some of the women from the village checking out the work going into the house.



Mel (eating the banana) and some other volunteers turned over and planted a garden for the future occupants. Habitat in Lesotho focuses on serving Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs).



The village women again. There was a family from the US Embassy that put in an enormous amount of work on the house. They outworked everybody for sure. You can see their youngest daughter painting a window.



Sim got the high parts of the wall while I got the low parts. Here is was showing his versatility with Blue Steel impression.



Ryan is an education volunteer in Leribe. He was an all-star plasterer. The house had 3 rooms and, as you can see here, was wired for electricity.



Carrie decided to touch up some window corners. The wall to the right is one of the ones that Sim and I tag-teamed.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Summer is Here

Spring is having a battle with Summer. Flowers are out, most of the trees have filled out with leaves, and days are getting hot. But, once in a while, Spring comes through with a delightfully cool morning. Which is how today began, and it must be an omen for what will surely be a crazy Independence Day celebration here in Lesotho (Lesotho gained independence on October 4th, 1966 after 92 years of being a British protectorate).

I forgot my running shoes at work on Friday because I was so excited for the week to be done, so I came into work this morning to fetch them and thought I'd write a quick post after taking some time off.

I'll start with a work update, because that's what consumes most of my time. We received bids for the first phase of construction for the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation projects back in early August. The phase consists of 80 rural water supply systems and accompanying Ventilated Improved Pit Latrines, about 8700 of them. Those 80 schemes were then broken into 28 Lots, for which we received 24 bids. Three team members and I spent the next 5 weeks evaluating bids and producing a 1300 page report recommending award of the 28 Lots to 16 qualified bidders. MCA and MCC both cleared the report and we are now preparing contracts that will be sent to recommended bidders next week. All that to say that in the next two weeks we should have signed 16 contracts worth USD 16.9 million and in the following month we will handover the 80 sites for construction to start. It should be a frantic and exciting time.

So, my last 10 weeks in country will fly by with meetings and trainings and site visits and reports and, hopefully, it will go smoothly. Regardless, all of my tasks will be handed over to my counter-part roundabouts December 10th, I'll close my service on December 15th and catch a flight back to the US on the 16th or 17th. It's too far away to have a retrospective, but stay-tuned.

There will be lots of pictures as construction starts, so hold your horses.