Hello Everyone!

We finally did it!
The side walls of the bridge have been poured in one shot!

After a huge hail storm this past Sunday, it continued to rain and storm for 4 days.  Finally the weather returned to the usual South African sun and we scrambled to finish the framing and began the pour. We poured until 8pm into the darkness with head lamps and cell phone lights to get it done.

What a relief!  The enormous amounts of water flow against our shoring under the bridge had really challenged our framing of the support system.  Job well done, because it all held up and the pour is great.

We will strip the forms from the side walls of the bridge on Tuesday and then wait another 2 weeks for everything to cure to full strength before we remove the shoring from under the bridge. 
Whew!

On the baby chicks front, they were 4 days old when the hail storm happened and they really got scared of that sound on the metal roof.  Of course the power to their heat lamps went out at the same time. We were running around in the pouring rain to get the generator moved into place to get the heat back on them.  Even with vigilant overnight refilling of the fuel in the generator, we lost about 10% of the chicks.  The poultry ranch had told us that we should expect 5-10% of the chicks not to make it, but we had only lost just a few until the storm hit and thought we were beating the expectations.  The rest are doing very well now and running happily all over the place!

The work in the library to make room for the computer lab is done with just dusting and another coat of varnish needed on the workstations. There are 3 tables with 6 workstations at each for a total of 18 computers.  The kids who are working with us now, along with the teachers are all excited for their upcoming lessons....we are going to have to manage this in shifts, I can tell.

Ok, I'm going to sit under a tree for a while and watch the smiles of the locals crossing the bridge.

Happy holidays to you all!!!
Rome

Project Photos