Guveya often wants me to go with him to look at something and discuss a problem. A common issue is getting building materials. In Africa everything is built with brick and mortar because termites and carpenter ants eat every piece of wood in sight, so we use a lot of cement which has to be brought in from Harare, a three hour drive away. The closest hardware store where we can get smaller items is 100 kms away, so running out of nails, screws, window frames or steel is a real nuisance. We plan our projects and trips to the city as well as possible, but there are often times when we have to ‘make a plan’ and find something else to do until we can get materials. Eden has a few tractors, but they are all quite old and it is normal to have only one operating. The building crew relies on a tractor to get sand, gravel and water to make concrete and cement and when the tractor is busy working the farmland we have to find other projects for the men to work on. It is a constant juggling act to make sure we have everything we need to keep projects moving forward and it always comes down to Rory and I to organise it. Living in Africa has taught me that I can still be task-oriented, but that I have to change my expectations of what’s possible to achieve. The normal solution to a problem is to get more people working. We don’t have a backhoe to load sand and gravel so we get eight men with shovels and it takes all day to get enough material to last the week.
