Planning, Painting, Planting

And we have PROGRESS!!

I write with a very happy heart after two fantastic days of hard work and with many days ahead of work that can be done. The best news of the week is that after almost a full month of fighting with the bank, our money has arrived safe and sound and we are now able to take the next step forward.

The money arrived on Tuesday of this week and we immediately started planning how to spend it. We knew that we needed to acquire another plot of land. The current plot is only big enough for the current and new buildings and Tanzanian law requires that if a school is going to be built there must also be room for a playground. There is a plot of land immediately behind the original building, it is currently completely full of corn, but it is quite a large piece of land. We met with the woman who owns the plot. She is a Maasai woman. Her husband left her when her two children were quite young. Her two boys are now getting older and she needed money to put them through school and to build them each a house. It is apparently a tradition that each boy should have his own home when he becomes a certain age. She owns quite a bit of land and is slowly selling it off piece by piece. We were fortunate to meet with her and convince her to sell us the land adjacent to our plot at a fair price. So, that was our first order of business as there were many people also placing bids on the land. The woman assured us that we were the only people she wanted to sell to because she knew it was for the school. It has been amazing to me to see the support from the surrounding community for this school. Everyone is excited to see the progress and just wants to do whatever they can to help.

After negotiating for the plot of land we met with our engineer. He too is excited to get started. We explained to him our current monetary situation and told him that we could only give him so much at this time. He was more than happy to start with what we have. So as of Monday, we will break ground and begin building the foundation for St. Dymphna School. I am incredibly excited to be working with this engineer. We sat and had sodas with him as he told us his story and why he is so eager to help us. He grew up in this area and has been looking for a way to give back to his community. His wife works with the largest volunteer HIV support network in Tanzania and has been encouraging him to do his part and get involved in the community. When he heard about St. Dymphna he saw it as his opportunity to contribute. He is doing everything that he can to lower costs and provide us with a quality building. It is incredibly refreshing to speak with him and hear about how excited his is about the project. His excitement and his respect for the project and the efforts of all of those involved with Brick by Brick reassures me that we are working with the right man.

So, once the money was spent or at least promised the fun was able to begin. After being inspired by the work of a few volunteers who painted Mary’s classroom at Patandi. (Thank you Joe, Becca, and Nikki) Bryan and I decided that we should paint the completed classroom at Olesevia.

Let me take a brief moment to explain the building plan as we have been unable to scan and post the actual drawings. Currently, there is a building that Mary and her friends and family funded and built over the past two years. It is standing but by no means complete. It is the building in all the pictures and the building that Kari and I helped to put windows and doors into in January. As of Monday, we will begin the second phase of the building, which will actually be a completely separate building, that will run perpendicular and to the right of the building that now stands. I promise to post pictures and scanned copies of the plans ASAP.



The classroom that now stands houses a class of anywhere from 3-7 students on a daily basis. The walls had been covered in cement but had never been painted with the exception of some crayon drawings by the children. It was grey and dark and somewhat depressing so after seeing the wonders that new paint can do for a classroom we decided to see what we could do. As of today we finished the second coat of white on all four walls. I feel as though I should thank Alice and Aron for all the hours of painting they “provided me with” during my undergraduate career because I learned that painting walls is definitely a skill and is not something that just anyone can do without causing streaks and drips. As I hope that you can see from the pictures there is already a vast improvement in the room it is now much brighter and appears to be much larger. We have plans to continue painting and I’m hoping to find someone with a little more artistic talent than I possess to paint a “under the sea” mural on the wall with numbered colorful fish.

And finally my favorite part of the today was when I once again had the opportunity to plant some African roots. Upon obtaining a plot of land it is customary to plant on it so that people know it has been purchased and is no longer for sale. So, amidst the maize Bryan and I planted the first tree on our new land. It truly is an amazing experience to dig in the dirt and plant something, for some reason it makes the whole experience here feel more real and tangible. I will always be able to watch our tree grow as well as my previously planted Kayley rose garden and know that those are roots that I helped to plant here in Tanzania. Those are my African roots.