Blog, Mission Possible Aug 2015: The family - British volunteers and Tanzanian builders.
Our Mission Possible team of volunteers and staff are carrying out a series of community projects during their August 2015 deployment in Tanzania.
Volunteer Emad Choudhury describes the ‘family’ that has grown up as British volunteers work with local builders.
It’s day 3 and we’re going back to the field happy, tired and automatically excited with the expectancy that we would most likely be finished constructing the water harvesting system by today. I mean how hard can it be?
Finish the cementing and a bit of guttering right, ‘a piece of cake’. We quickly checked the roof and saw that it didn’t need a second coat of paint. We now all separated and throughout the day we would all alternate roles constantly to ensure complete involvement in all elements of the job.
I started guttering. Straight away problems! The guttering was too close to the roof and the water would flow past it and onto the floor. Everyone was quiet baffled with what to do. Nasir and Sabah (the other 2 members of the team) decided to add an extra piece of wood to the brackets of the guttering which would create more space where the guttering would sit and problem solved.
Again the fundis learnt something new and smiles all round. By now we had a good flow going and work was well in order. Our cement base was nearing completion, Sabah and Nasir had become pros at cementing and great friends with the builder who was cementing the base, while I was busy making the guttering.
There wasn’t one moment where anyone’s spirits hit a low. We left the site happy but realised that this task still needed another day till completion. The other two systems were just under half complete which actually surprised us all as those builders didn’t have us three volunteers constantly holding the fundis back.
I must admit this day ran the smoothest. The majority of it went well with few hiccups. The greatest memory of the day has to be how everyone was calling each other ‘fundi’. We had become this little family where everyone was bouncing off each other and working was such a laugh.
Emad Choudhury
