Mahenge: still not ready for a handover!

Share with me my frustration with this village. It was october 2015, when we brought sand and gravel to this school. Today we are mid July 2018 and still some plastering, flooring and painting needs to be done. The last delay was caused by the (offcourse unannounced) closure of the  cement factory for their yearly overhaul, which prevented them to have to building completely ready for today.  But we decided to pay them anyhow a visit and put some dots on the i's.

They have a hundred reasons, why they are so late: political issues in the village, their contributions got stolen by one of the village leaders, the sudden death of the project leader of the village, etc., etc. We told them that with only 4 decent classrooms they have to do much better. They have also to learn to work with volunteers instead of always paying for work: with that many children you have also a lot of fathers! Where are they?

We explained them that they have 2 options: or they take the task serious or we we leave them on their own. As they do not want us to go, we gave them a challenge: the building under construction plus the renovation of one of the 2 remaining buildings should be completed by September 15.  Than we will have a proper handover. The renovation of the last building has to be completed by end of the year.  If they manage that, we will construct in 2019 their missing classrooms and library on the spot where now a very old building is slowly falling apart.

They accepted the challenge and then it was time to fit my new shirt, they arranged for me. I'll have to loose a few more kilos!