Taken this very morning, setting african blog posting records. This is Bright's loom set up at the Trade Fair. He stole my seat pad because mine is a lot newer than his, jerk.

I am under orders from some big donors to take LOTS of pictures of the Basketball court being built so here are some:

Bricks for the foundation

Truck dropping one of the loads of sand.

This court is for them and they're glad to help.


Land after clearing

Part of the planning committee

Land before clearing.

The site of the court, directly behind the Secondary School
The court is coming along very nicely, well for Africa. The land was cleared and fairly leveled by the school kids in no time, which was awesome to see them all out there excited about the project. Mukaila wants this to be around for a long time and is making sure things are done correctly. That means right now they have formed bricks that will be the base for the court so that it doesn’t sag and crack. We’ve had 10 truck loads of sand and stones delivered and have a platform made for all the cement work. Things were flying until we ran into our current problem. There are no poles to be found in all of southern Volta region for some reason. Today we’re going to look some more but we have to have the poles before we lay the cement so this could be our first (of many I’m sure) delay.
It’s extremely weird to be on the other side of things. I’ve done construction in the States for like 7 years but started as the grunt and then ended as crew chief, never the guy paying for it but rather building it. If I wanted things to go faster I would just work harder. So far I’ve lifted 2 bags of cement and they yelled at me for doing that. They call me “sir” or “Mister Daniel” and have me look at things and approve them. I don’t like it, give me my 20 ounce Craftsman hammer with straight claw (think I miss my tools much?).
On the weaving side of things today we packed up Bright’s loom and hauled it to Ho for the Volta Region Trade Fair. Not sure how it’ll all turn out but they have a very nice set up at the parade grounds and people are coming from all over. They were just opening the stalls this morning but I thought it was really cool. This week I’ll be splitting time in Ho and Kpetoe. I don’t think I’ll actually be doing too much work in either but it’ll be nice to mix things up a little.