When I started working with the building crew I told the men that they should be either learning something new or teaching something new to someone else. We want to be people who live with open hands to give and to receive. I love to teach the men new skills that help them do their jobs better and they have taught me a lot about building Africa-style. I love talking with them, getting to know them and mentor them. I have begun to teach them about efficiency. The definition that we have come up with for doing something more efficiently is ‘better and faster.’ As we are learning together the projects are getting done more efficiently and there has been an attitude change in the crew.
When I first started working with the men they didn’t like how I pushed them to work better and faster. They just wanted to put in their day and go home. After a while they saw how projects were getting done quicker and people in the community began to talk. I’m told that Shona people are always watching, especially watching the murungus, but they like to see what’s going on and talk about it. Much of it is gossip, which we are trying to curb, but the community started to see how quickly buildings were being completed and maintenance was getting done on existing buildings. I pointed this out to the men and told them that everyone was paying attention to what we are doing and talking about how well the builders were doing. I told them to take pride in their work, to do it to the best of their ability and to do it for God, not for me, for Guveya or for Eden.
When it came time for the crew to get new work suits the Guveya asked me to get orange suits for the builders and red for he and his assistant. He said that orange and red are the colour of the clay bricks they build with. They wanted to stand out from the other Eden employees. Now you can spot the builders from a distance in their orange worksuits, which may be in tatters, but they still wear them as a matter of pride.
