Nyree trades her keyboard for a wheelbarrow
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For a couple of weeks in July, I traded my keyboard and mouse for a wheelbarrow, pick-axe and shovel. I was part of a team of 26 who had volunteered to help in the construction of a church in Cottendale, South Africa.
This project was undertaken for a group of about 70 people who were currently using someone's one-bedroom home as a church. Their dream was to have a church that would be used as a base from which community-based projects could happen, but they did not have the resources to bring the dream to fruition.
This is where our team of volunteers stepped in, from fundraising to actually getting to be a part of the building project, working alongside the locals. Most of the volunteers did not have prior building experience, so I fitted right in! Fortunately for all concerned the project was overseen by a local construction company! As you can imagine, a building site delightfully untouched by such things as OSH seems worlds away from the offices of software development...
A day in the life of Nyree working for StorMan in Auckland, New Zealand:
The first thing I do in the morning is have a hot shower, grab some muesli and join the other cars on the road -passing a handful of shops and a few houses on the way to work. Once at work, I sit. I sit while I answer the phone, I sit while I write on papers and I sit while I develop code. I sit while I do testing, while I answer emails and while we have meetings. The most physical activity I have to do for my job is to open the filing cabinet or occasionally crawl under the desk to check the network cable!
A day in the life of Nyree working on a building site in Cottendale, South Africa:
The first thing I did in the morning was try to have a hot shower. I use 'try', because it didn't always happen. We were staying on a private game reserve which had basic dorm-style accommodation with communal kitchen and bathroom facilities. The outdoor showers under the trees did not have a roof - which was fine if you didn't think too hard about what could come out of the trees (scorpions, snakes, leopards, for example)
I learned that even though you were sharing the showers with 26 others it did not always pay to be the first in the shower. This is because the water was heated by a fire, which was usually started each morning by the camp caretaker. Optimal showering time was sometime between the fire having had a chance to heat the water and just before everybody else used it up. Our shared breakfast was prepared by whoever was rostered on at the time, under the guidance of our volunteer camp-cook, Ann. We were introduced to mielie-pap which is a white maize dish similar to porridge, cooked in a cast-iron pot over an open fire.
After breakfast we all piled into two vans for our half hour commute to Cottendale. The first 10 minutes was spent driving over bumpy dirt roads just to leave our own game reserve (which was inside another, much larger game reserve) and then driving through the second game reserve to get to the tar-sealed road. Along the way we would pass impala, giraffe, wildebeests, warthogs, monkey families, and other, more rare, sightings of zebra and cervil (small cat)... be sure to check out the photos at the end of this article.
We would then take the tar-sealed road towards Cottendale, entering a world where large loads like firewood and groceries are carried by head (i.e. on your head), where babies are tied to their mother's backs with towels and where wheelbarrows are the handbag of choice. The wheelbarrows contain anything from groceries to children, to large plastic drums containing the household water supply.
On the way we drove through Acornhoek, a busy community with the usual supermarkets, hairdressers and hardware stores as well as the stalls on the side of the road - it was the season for oranges and they were sweet and cheap! Others were selling brooms made of brush, or the contents of whatever they had cooking in their cast iron pots. There was also a stall - consisting of a freight carriage - selling tombstones. A little further down the road we would pass a large round purple building which was an AIDS testing and counselling centre. AIDS is an epidemic in this region.
One afternoon a group of us visited the Nhlengelo orphanage, which was a drop-in centre for children primarily orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. The centre had an extensive vegetable garden which supplemented the funding for food provided by Hope for Humanity. The children came to the orphanage after school, ate their only meal for the day and then returned to their unsecured homes with their siblings. I was touched just watching the siblings interacting with each other, the oldest ones having assumed responsibilities beyond their years because there was no-one else to play the role of protector or provider for the younger members of their family. I was also inspired by their exuberance and I will not forget as we were leaving the laughter from those kids as the boys kicked the soccer balls we had brought them continuously into the air.
After Acornhoek we would take the turn-off to Cottendale, down a dusty little road with basic mud brick houses, with children and adults waving to us on the way past. Once at the building site it was on with the heavy-duty gardening gloves, the sunscreen and a hat. We had a team of about 10 "real" workers - these were the guys who were builders by trade and who worked for the construction company overseeing the operation.
The building was to have the capacity to seat about 150, with toilets and a couple of small rooms at the back. My jobs consisted of carrying and stacking bricks so they were easily available to the people who knew what they were doing! I also helped dig the trench for the retaining wall that was to run along the back of the church, filled the holes in the brick work with mortar, painted, and learned to enjoy the art of bag-washing! Bag-washing is a cheaper way of plastering and is done by brushing thin cement over the brick walls and rebrushing it with water. It creates a rough but finished look to the building which is then painted.
I think it was one of the days I was helping to shovel out the rock-hard soil from the trench for the retaining wall, that one of the guys leading the team of volunteers said to me, "So Nyree, how does this compare with your normal job?" ... "My normal job," I wheezed, "is much easier."
We were working to a deadline, having only two weeks to complete the building in time for it's official opening, where dignitaries such as the local chief, who had sold the land for the church for a song, were expecting to officially open the church.
At the end of week one I thought we were not going to make the deadline but during the last week of construction everything seemed to come together. The final Friday saw me sitting on the floor of the church sanding paint spots off the sandstone floor with the realisation that we had done it!
I'm probably not cut out for building site work, so it is good that I am back in the StorMan office in Auckland, New Zealand, but I am so grateful to have been part of an experience that has opened my world view just that little bit more.
- by Nyree Tomkins (StorMan NZ).
The monkeys would come down to the camp kitchen to steal our food - fruit, butter - even the sugar from the sugar bowl!
Locals carrying their wares to market
A cheetah doing what cats do best at Moholoholo Rehabilitation centre
The boys at the Nhlengelo orphanage telling me how good South Africans are at Soccer
The shower block under the trees - no snakes or leopards made an appearance - fortunately
Nyree at work on the building site!
A giant sieve - the locals commented that they hadn't seen white men working before, let alone white women,
and that it was unusual to see white men and black men working side by side
Locals carrying their wares to market
The inside of the church on opening day
The finished product on opening day - the Cottendale community were curious to see
the church they had watched being built over the last couple of weeks