Welcome back to the ongoing picture blog of creating The
StoneHouse.
After removing a good deal of rocks and brush (some of which
was Acacia plants with 21/2 inch thorns, ouch!) and taking down the old barbed
wire fencing, we began the process of leveling the land for the tent. The
terrain was lumpy and full of root-balls of old hedges from days gone by. It
took a few days of pulling dirt around to get something that even resembled
being flat.
Amidst the process we found out that about one quarter of
the area had been used as a coal and charcoal business years ago. Now what that
means after you have removed the sparse grass covering, is that you have large
area of coal dust. In this picture you can see where the coal begins as the color changes from brown to a dull grey.
Which when walking upon creates a small cloud of nasty black
dust with every step. As this would never do with hundreds of people walking
(or dancing) around the inside of the tent, we had to remove all of it.
In some places it was a foot thick. So with jembays (African
shovels), their American counterpart (regular shovels) and a borrowed wheelbarrow,
we commenced to moving it to…somewhere else… don’t even ask!
With that completed we ordered some crushed volcanic gravel
that has a very little dust factor and commenced to spreading it over the
building area.
The next project was digging the Choo (bathroom) pit. This doesn’t
sound like much until you realize they must be about 4x6 and up to 12 or 15
feet deep.
As we energetically began, dirt was flying everywhere. Wow! We
thought we might be able to finish this pretty quick… or so we thought, till 2
feet further down we struck … a layer of
sandstone! This layer would end up being at least 13 feet thick. We had to use
pick axes to break it, and then haul up the pieces in a five gallon bucket. It
took us forever to get to the prescribed depth. In fact we are still trying to
get down a little further.
This picture fully relays the feelings of the brave young
men who dug this pit. Like King David they cried out in their distress… ‘Oh
Lord deliver me from the pit!’
For more pictures showing us leveling the land and digging
the choo… click here.
The next building segment will be about our wonderful fence
that is everyone is talking about. That page should be completed in about a few
days. To read about it go to the blog pages at the top of the last post and click
StoneHouse... The Fence.
Your friendly neighborhood missionaries … David and Cynthia
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