kindergardens4senegal.org

 Sand...............................            

 Cement...........................

Water...........................

It's a special challenge every time.

Mix...........................

 Here we are................................

The first brick is born.

In the next two weeks 5,500 bricks will follow. That is the amount needed for the whole new kindergarten building.

The quality of the bricks can be improved, if they get "watered" every morning and evening for the first week. It was mostly my job to do the "watering", and because of the vast number of bricks the watering can often found its way into my dreams. Many very busy women pulled up 4,000 liters of water from the well every day, carried it in plastic containers about 150 meters and emptied it into an oildrum.

To avoid unnecessary costs (or greedy pockets) Elhadji and I took care of buying all the needed material. From a couple of tons of cement, loads of sand, boards, armoring iron, to the smaller things like nails, watering cans, a new rope for the well and ever so many other things that need to be negotiated time and again. The wages also get payed directly by me. Because of the different kind of salaries like: day laborer, weekly payments and monthly wages, as well as payment by quantity, the wage and salary administration is a challange as well as time consuming making sure everyone gets payed correctly.

Elhadji additionally takes charge of checking and monitoring the building supplies. He goes to the building site with the first workers before 8AM and works until the sun goes down at about 7PM. The workdays are long and busy, but the good colaboration with the workers motivates us time and again. Alfredo Dos Santos, our "Chef de maçon" gets a lot of praise. He does all of the work from the foundation to the bricklaying until right under the roof.

Lamine Mané is our expert. He studied architecture and despite his young age has already woked independently as a construction site manager. He is very reliable and has accompanied and advised us from the very beginning of the planning phase with his expertise and commitment. Despite an accident, that resulted in a broken food and cast, he is on the building site almost every day. He really is a great support in achieving the quality we want.

In the meantime the foundation has been measured and marked on the ground. For the foundation walls 50cm deep trenches need to get dug out, shovel by shovel, as well as the 80cm deep squares for the posts. At the same time a metalworker is getting the armoring ready. Next week the sheathing will placed and the foundation well get poured.