DAY SIX AND SEVEN

(AND ON THE SABBATH, I DID BREAK THE ONLY HAMMER)

The last two days I’ve been getting stuck into the outside work at the schools. The two guys I’m working with in the village are Sipo and Charles, both great lads in their own right, both completely different.

Sipo or Seeps as we call him is twenty years old, fairly tall with a slim athletic build, which he needs as he tells me he has SIX girlfriends (one of which he trusts). No wonder he has such an athletic build! Seeps wants to be a builder and is a very enthusiastic lad. What he doesn’t have and unfortunately what he needs are academic qualifications or any papers that say he can build and unless someone is willing to sponsor him (like Pride n Purpose) he probably wont attain them. That doesn’t mean he’ll never be a builder but it does mean he’ll stay as either a labourer or get paid very little. Also he could do with catching a lucky break and just finding work. Seeps does work for Johan (Lindsay’s husband) at Ulusaba when he needs him and he’s the ’go to’ guy for Lindsay when a volunteer is around for working in the Dumphries village. He last spent six months working with Paul, a qualified builder, doing some pretty big projects Dehani school, Jeremiah creche and Amensi house (all Pride and Purpose funded and built houses) and now the lucky bugger is working with me for a month. Other than that he’s just your usual teenager with rafts of music (reggae and hip hop mostly) and he watches loads of films. His genre of choice are martial arts films. I’ve been talking loads to him about Jean Claude Van Dam and Arnold Schwarzenegger who he’s fans of. I’m not really but he struggles with my name so saying theirs is well worth the chat.

Charles, again is a super cool lad. I think Charles is about thirty but he carries a much older head. When I first met him I described him to Lindsay as an ’over see-er’ and I think though he is more talkative now I still see him in that role. On the first few occasion I met him he was sort of keeping an eye on peoples behaviour and when they said something in Afrikaans about me that was what he might consider ’disrespectful’, he suitably brought them back into line. Sometimes with just putting his finger to his lips. He’s also a quiet spoken and reserved sort of person. Charles’s role with Lindsay and therefore with me is as a driver. Dividing Dumphries village from the reserve is the perimeter fence (infact as I’m writing this I’m listening to some lions calling outside, they’ve been fairly close recently), we drive down to the fence, a guard opens a single pedestrian gate and then Charles drives us from the gate to the village, along some pretty poor roads. He has his own transport, a ’Buckie’, which is basically an small pick up. When he’s not working for Lindsay, Charles delivers water to the villages and schools. What makes this role more remarkable is Charles is fairly heavily physically disabled on his lower body. Not something he seems to dwell on, at least not in the short time I’ve known him, still he’s up and doing something and making a living for himself. Now that’s a good bloke.

Today's work was repairing swings in Denalli school, this is also where we’ll be fitting guttering and channelling it into the Jo Jo tank. The swings they have at present are old tyres seats, which are held onto the wooden frame by discarded lengths of rope. Also there is room for more swings than is currently available. The plan for today was to cut free the existing rope swings, bolt the chains around the wooden frame and then depending on the type of swing seat we'd use, connect the chain to it accordingly. We would then paint the tyres nice bright colours.

I have to say though, today was a bit of a learning curve for me. Not the work, that was pretty straight forward. The ‘man management‘, yep, I have to get a handle on that. The problem is everyone wants to make a couple of rands but the reality is only a few can be employed to help. Today I was on my own for the first time and the thinking was clearly along the lines of ’lets see what we can get out of the new boy’. A bit like when you step onto the beech with a gleaming white body and Union Jack shorts and every tout in the area comes to sell you all kinds of tat, with initial price you could buy a flat for in Chelsea. Well today I was buying the flats.

I had already drilled the holes into the tyres, the nuts, spanners ect were all on the floor ready. I had briefly explained to Sipo the way the swings were going to be made and fitted to the frame. I then went to tell the teacher what we were intending to do and to say hello. One of the guys who was there clearly saw his chance and started to ’fit’ the chains to the framework. The two problems I now had was (1) he’d want paying and (2) in his haste to get the chains on he’d neglected the aesthetics of the job. The bad news (1) there was no money for him and (2) the nuts were nylon locking ones, so once they were screwed onto the frame, they could not be unscrewed . Great.

Though the swings worked well enough when they were finished and they were painted nice and brightly, I was disappointed that they didn’t look ‘spot on’. The ends of the chains that went over the frame to be fastened back on themselves again, had lengths of chain dangling around and I think looked a little unsightly. They should have been tidy when bolted. The good news is the kids didn’t seem to mind.They had new swings, a different style of swing and the teachers were over the moon that they were held on with chains. So in that sense they were a success.

Day two went much more smoothly, though at first the same guy started to get involved and to be fair he did do some pretty heavy grafting before I had to explain he wasn’t getting paid. The ground is pretty much rock solid and he had dug a whole of about two feet deep and about a foot across. A lengthy meeting took place between Sipo, Charles and Charles's brother. The meeting was mostly in Afrikaans, with the odd 'no problem' and a shake of the head in my direction. The outcome was that Charles and Sipo would pay him a wage out of their money. I did feel a little sorry for them but it was their choice to make.

Today we had to secure a ’Jungle Jim’ climbing frame and make three swings for Jeremiah creche. They had no swings and the Jungle Jim was leaning to one side alarmingly. I don’t think it would have fallen over any time to soon but it was definitely going to fall.

Seeps and I had to dig down and then concrete the base of two three metre pine poles into the holes and then secure the other end of the poles to the frame. This worked really well and the frame was much more sound after we finished. We also put a nice big chain swing on the frame,made with an old landrover tyre. The swing was big enough for two children to swing on together. Like children anywhere though, I'm sure there will be about five or six on there. Like children anywhere, that will only end in tears! we also had to nail dawn a number of planks, re attached the ropes and secure the walk ways. Whilst i was carrying on with the work I started to sing, The kids here absolutely love this. I'm pretty sure their not judging me on vocal capabilities, least I hope their not. My singing voice is my talking voice, just louder. They were laughing their heads off so I was playing up to them. They loved it and started copying me so I starting singing (now bare with me with this one because I'm not sure what its called) 'Ba Ba Ba Ba Bamba, Ba Ba Bamba'. We sand this one for about an hour!
During the course of the day I unfortunately, though rather professionally broke the only hammer we had, it was a clean break and the head cleared two fences. I’m rather proud of that, I don’t think many people could achieve that sort of distance in such heat. We overcome the ‘minor’ set back. The whole frame was then finished off with a coat of varnish. Whilst we were trying to varnish it, the kids started to play on it. It was like fly paper on their hands, kids stuck everywhere.

Sipo had already attached two swings to a separate frame, the third was done by Charles brother (the extra hand!) and again it was crooked, he should have gone to spec savers.

Still it was an enjoyable day, the kids were really excited and the teachers very kindly provided us with some dinner. We were given a chicken piece, some rice, a dollop of tomato sauce, some pieces of onion and a spoonful of beans. It was fairly nice but I’d have to say it was more generous than it was nice and considering what some people have and have to eat, it was extremely generous and I’ll always appreciate the gesture, if not the tomato sauce. I’m definitely a brown sauce kind of bloke.

Tomorrow I’m having an unexpected day off. I’ve been very kindly given the use of Lindsay and Johans ’buckie’ and I’m heading to Kruger National Park. Should be mega.