The Community Centre

The whole purpose of Raleigh going to Carona in Conte Burika, was to help build a wooden community centre, 8m by 6m, on a raised stilted platform.

I knew it was going to be tough, but nothing really prepares you until you try it first hand. First of all, there was the searing heat to contend with, sapping you of any energy you have. Then, there is the bland and protein free food- always rice and beans, rice and spaghetti, rice and beans and tuna and occasionally, maybe twice, we had a fried egg. After a while, we discovered fruit trees - guava, oranges (which look like lemons) and unripe mango which is doable if you add lots of sugar, and amazingly, stem ginger roots buried under the earth which made for a comforting hot toddy the days I was sick with a streaming head cold.

The actual physical labour of the project was harder than anything I could have imagined. The sites where we collected wood were between 30 minutes to 1 hour away and one by one, we had to carry 54 heavy (50-60kg) foundation logs (lighter colour), and over 200 cedar logs for the flooring of the building. The logging alone took us the best part of the project, and we felt as a result that we were carthorses, feeling totally redundant when the children and women villagers came to help and carried six times more wood than we could manage.

Once all the wood was down, we had to saw off one end of each bit, to even it out so it would all fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. After that, we had the pleasure of hammering it all together, so the end result, after 3 hard weeks, looked like this (see next image, computer wont let me download here...)