Judy hauling "dagga", or mortar mix, one shovel full at a time.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

The floors are finished & the rafters are up!

Our week with Habitat for Humanity, Johannesburg is speeding to its close. Today, a bit stiff and sore, we begin the 3rd day of our Habitat for Humanity (HFH) build in Ivory Park.

Ivory Park is an informal settlement, or shantytown, with approximately 500,000 families. This week, two other homes are being built here, each with its own crew of volunteers from the sponsoring organization. HFH Johannesburg will build 29 homes during the week of June 16.

The rafters are in place to be installed and the floor is partially completed.

All the work is by hand. A backhoe would be a boon, except that it wouldn’t fit in the tiny lot. Wednesday we built the outer walls, one block at a time, up to the roofline. Whenever the shout for “Dagga!” or “more bricks!” rang through the neighborhood, any idle volunteers leaped to action, forming another human chain to pass the bricks to those wielding trowels. We’ll add the trusses today, to get ready for the corrugated roofing. Then there’s the cement floor, inner walls for the four rooms – will we really finish by Friday afternoon? Each day as Trevor drives us to or from Ivory Park, he grins again and reassures us that we are on schedule and all will be completed by Friday’s dedication ceremony. We’re determined that our backs will hold out – and we’re eager to be amazed.

Steve and some of the crew work on the concrete floor.

We finished the floor! And the rafters are up! Just one more day…

Judy & Steve

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