Category: Africa
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To be of use
This little poem was shared as a morning reflection during our build. I think it sums up what I hope and strive for when I go on these trips. We in western society are lucky to be able to choose to define ourselves by what we do in our work or leisure. But for most…
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Things that go WAAAAAAAAHHHH in the night
I already let you in on one of the minor disruptions to our sleep while in Humjibre – our loudspeaker friend Brother Love, dubbed for his persuasive, evangelical and above all self-appreciating cadence in his voice. Then there are the roosters which begin howling at 4:00 am and dont really stop through the day until…
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the build
I thought I should take a moment to duck out of the sweltering Burkina sun to let you know how things are going. Where to start? How about the build… Akwabaa (“welcome” in the local Ghanaian dialect) Humjibre is a small remote village of 3000 people located about an 9 hour drive from Accra. Upon…
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Land of Great Stone Houses
The word “Zimbabwe” in old Shona means “great stone houses”, an appropriate description for one of the sites I saw here in my short visit to this country. Zimbabweans are a friendly lot, they are progressive, they don’t have the racial problems that South Africa is plagued with. I get the feeling that when the…
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Relaxing by One of the Seven Wonders of the World
LAND OF SMOKE THAT THUNDERS David Livingstone was the first European to see the falls in the 1850s (though the Arab traders probably saw them 500 to 800 years before him. Livingstone named them for Queen Victoria, but the locals know them as the Smoke that Thunders. Our team arrived here mid-afternoon a week ago …
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A la prochaine
Living in a village with no lights in a part of the world where the sun sets at 6:00 pm has a great effect on the body. Dinner is eaten by candlelight and any reading or journal writing is done with the help of a flashlight or headlamp. More importantly, it means that you are…
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First Day of Work
A word about our lodgings. We are staying in 2 Habitat houses about 36 square metres in size each. In that space, there are 2 bedrooms, a living/dining room, a kitchen, pantry closet and a space that could be used for storage or as a shower stall (latrine is behind the house). Normally, rural African…
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Hello from Tiyende Pamodzi, Zambia
Well I’ve been here for a couple of full days now and have been able to get a good sense of the village where we’re living and working. I met up with my Habitat group at Heathrow airport on Wednesday evening. We were supposed to fly out at 7:15 in the evening local time, but…
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Fin
I have been back home now since last Tuesday night trying to revert back to my old life. It hasn’t been an easy transition, which is not surprising, and it has kept me from writing the final journal entry. Nonetheless, I thought I better get on this before the immediacy and clarity of my thoughts…
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Farewell Lesotho. And now back to South Africa.
I’ve been a little negligent on sending updates, mostly because I have been on the move a lot lately since I left Maseru. Today is my last full day in Jo’burg before returning home. The past week has flown by so quickly yet it seems I am a world away from Lesotho where I spent…
sedativegunk 