2-1/2 hours in 2-1/2 minutes

Recently, many of you joined us in helping our local Christian church repair some severe storm damage their building incurred about 5 years ago. This was a completely unofficial effort on our part—not a Peace Corps thing, and last week we finished up our part of it. Those involved should have just received an email detailing what you helped do, but for everyone else I’ll summarize: (USD)$1255 was raised and, as a result, The church now has the building supplies needed to repair their roof (beams and corrugated sheets and screws and nails) and to rebuild the damaged sections of their concrete-brick walls. It’s not enough money to build a brand new church building, but it should be enough to make the existing one structurally sound.

Since we’re leaving next week, we won’t be around to see the final result of this effort. But with the materials now in-hand, their repair work can begin.

Anyway, I made a little video from some footage I took at one of the Sunday services (which are held in the damaged building, as you’ll see) so now you can all have a glimpse of this congregation in action.

Final Garden Project Update

Well, our work on the community garden’s water system has finished, and I just turned in the final reports and paperwork to the Peace Corps office (it was a PC Partnership Project). So I thought I’d give you all a little summary report as well—after all, you helped fund it.

First of all, some numbers for you. I surveyed garden members recently, asking them about their homesteads, their garden usage and how this dry season compares to last year’s dry season—which was prior to our project. And as you’d expect, having a reliable source of water in the garden has changed things for the better. Nearly everyone I talked with reported having a better food harvest and planting more seedlings this dry season. And right now, about 80% of the garden’s land has been cleared and/or plowed, compared to about 35% utilization last year. Garden membership has already doubled (from 10 active homesteads to 20, and from about 25 active gardeners to over 50), and it continues to grow. What's most encouraging is, all this growth is happening during the dry season.

And here are some water system specs:

• 1 concrete streamside reservoir
• 730 meters of new 110mm underground piping (and about 1km of total underground piping)
• 1 big steel filter placed over the beginning of our pipeline
• 5 shut-off valves located at various spots along the pipeline
• 32 standpipes and self-locking garden spigot heads (20 of them brand new)
• 4 big concrete water tanks inside the garden
• 3 pipeline flush-out locations
• 1 new maintenance wing of the Garden Committee
• 1 new water system maintenance manual (in siSwati)
• 1 big bag of spare parts, tools and repair accessories for the Garden Committee

Now for some pictures of the new water system’s main components...

Here’s one of the standpipes and garden spigots. There are 32 of them in the garden (16 on 2 different pipe rows), and we replaced 20 of them.

Here’s the water reservoir. It’s where our pipeline begins.

Here’s the main flush-out pipe and valve. This streambed is the low-point of our pipeline, so it's the best place to drain (and clean out) the system.

Here’s one of the garden water tanks. We built 4 of these in selected spots in the garden. Together they hold about 3700 gallons of water in reserve, especially useful when the pipeline needs to be shut off for maintenance or repairs.

Here is one of two lower flush-out spots. We installed these removable caps onto the end of the 2 rows of piping in the garden. Now they can flush out any debris or build-up from the spigot lines, which should considerably extend the life of the system.

Here’s the cover of our garden water system maintenance manual. It’s a 20-page guide to the system components, routine maintenance schedules, and replacement parts. And it’s in siSwati, thanks to the translation assistance of a few local friends. I distributed it to all the Garden Committee members as well as their 4 maintenance assistants/experts.

Much of our recent work on this project has been aimed at enhancing the long-term sustainability of this water system. And in this case, sustainability really hinges upon maintenance: will the garden members continue to maintain their water system, will they make future repairs properly and protect its components from vandals and cows… all of this remains to be seen. We’ve equipped them with all the tools and skills we could think of for them to do these things, and now it’s time for us to let go and step away. After being an active part of that garden for almost 2 years now, letting go isn’t an easy thing to do.

But when you’re done, you’re done. And we’re satisfied with the fruits of this labor, satisfied that it provides a good opportunity for these local gardeners to bring more food into their kitchens and to earn some income selling their surplus crop (right now in the garden, the going rate for a head of cabbage is E5, or about 65 cents). So we thank all of you who contributed to this project. You really did help improve the daily lives of people in Zombodze, and we hope this little report makes that truth a bit more tangible to you.

Primary School Library Grand Opening

The other week, Ngwane Central Primary School held a Grand Opening ceremony for its brand new (and first ever) library. In all, the project has been a great success, bridging old book donations with new ones from 3 different sources: Darien Book Aid, Books for Africa (which many of you personally donated through via the Peace Corps Partnership Program), and from the teachers and Penpal students in Cottonwood Arizona. In all, there are now over 2000 books on the shelves. A new Library Committee has been formed, a card catalogue has been created, books have been color-coded and organized by subjects and the lending can begin.

Thank you to all who contributed to this project. It's been a lot of fun for us, and really rewarding for everyone involved (hopefully you too).

Here's a very short video about the Grand Opening day...

And here are a few pics of the book check-in process, which we helped the kids do over a 2 or 3 week period.

This was early on, when the shelves were still mostly bare. In all, more than 30 kids helped us and a handful of teachers in the book check-in process. Many of them had never before known how to identify an author, publisher, or even title. So this was quite a crash-course for them.

Here's the book check-in assembly line. 5 stations, all in a long row... Henry Ford would be so proud.

We received enough dictionaries to keep one in every single classroom, plus have a few left in the library. this made the English teachers very, very happy.

We received lots of beginner/young kids' books as well as young-adult books. a good mix.