acceleration

after a 2am night and 5:30am morning finishing the shuttering, tom and i headed for the cement and concrete institute in midrand to pour our concrete. we had arranged the session with mathews, their education facilitator. he had obliged and agreed to supply us with concrete and a set accelerator as we had to strike the moulds in two days!

the cnci workshop was surprisingly sterile and clean and organized. mathews seemed very knowledgeable and advised us on a 3:3:1 mix. it seemed too dry but tom assured me it wasn’t.
the work was physical and heavy. my knuckles were battered from last night’s shuttering assembly. the cuts were raw and scabs struggled to latch on as i scooped aggregate, sand and cement into buckets. we worked hard and fast in order to get back to kwathema at an hour reasonable to complete some tasks.

after mixing 36 buckets of stone, 36 buckets of sand, 12 buckets of cement and 26.4 litres of water in 12 batches in the mixer, the moulds were filled. the vibrating table was rigorous and bucked like a rodeo bull. tom, mathews and another man transferred the 100+ kg moulds onto a trolley for relocation to the store.

we left the cnci just before lunch and raced back to kwathema.

i arrived to find much progress. white lines were being painted across the tar towards our trees, the concrete slabs were being primed, the tyre bollards had been completed, a fischer representative was on site chemical mortaring the abacus rods into the brickwork and a front-end loader was roaring across the adjacent site dumping rubbish into a tip truck. veli was completing the beam of names and was soon to move onto the donors logos. i was relieved that i had such a motivated and focused group.

children had begun to gather at the abacus and as soon as permissible, started a game of spin-the-block. they jumped and high-fived and shouted.

i slotted in by attempting to assemble the tyre fixings that had been delivered by fischer. fischer had been so reliable and accommodating and so unexpectedly generous. guy and i battled with alignment and gareth drilled the holes. hannah arrived and commented on the handrail. she said she quite liked the yellow colour of the steel primer. she said it was far more discrete than the red would be.

catherine started to black-out miller for veli to write our. it finally seemed that we were generating big developments.

we headed back to johannesburg satisfied after making such big strides.

Red Oxide

Mood: Anxiety
Song in mind: Hillsong-Glorify your name

Location: Chess Park

Mission: Create a stoop around chessboard

Today, we were continuing with the stoop. In order for the stoop to be red, red oxide can be applied over it, which will over time be polished and becomes part of the concrete surface. We also prepared the area in front of the clubhouse to screed it and apply a red oxide onto the stoop. One of our concerns was with the edge of the stoop, therefore we decided to plaster the edge and apply red oxide onto it too.

Recycling

Today was a day of much activity. The morning started with a visit from Busi, a representative of The Glass Recycling Company. She was here to meet Stan and me to discuss his options in operating a glass collection facility in KwaThema. She was most positive about Stan’s position and felt that her board would approve the application which Ahaka and I draughted for him. In organising the skip, Stan would have an additional form of income and the community would have a real alternative to dumping their glass, or throwing it away in their general rubbish. Stan spoke about a person he would employ to collect glass, thus spreading his earnings further into the community. We were very happy with Busi’s visit as she showed some real commitment and belief in the viability of the recycling of glass next to the beer hall site.

As soon as Busi left, Dudu arrived with her assistant from Mondi Recycling. They were here to head our recycling workshop. In no time, around 100 Grade 6 learners, accompanied by their headmaster Dennis, joined us from Sakhelwe Primary School. They sang songs and thoroughly enjoyed Dudu’s talk about recycling waste and saving the environment.

The rest of the day was spent on various projects around the beer hall. We managed to finish the basketball lines, the props were finally painted, the balustrade was almost completely up and we received the first few beer crates from the Mississippi Tavern, down the road. Catherine finished the painting of the road stripes which stretch out to the next park and the concrete plinths in the landscape were also painted.

We were extremely relieved when a front end loader and a massive truck arrived to remove the mountain of rubbish. They worked for a long period, and made a great difference. Fischer also joined us today to chemical mortar our abacus which looks completely fabulous. Each face of each block is a wonderful piece of work, I could spend a long time looking at the paintings which the children did on our blocks at the workshop. We finished the day at Stan’s, as we do every Thursday, discussing the launch.

Interview Sound Clip:

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

Busi, The Glass Recycling Company visit.

Stanley Sibanyoni on ownership of the Beer Hall.

Street pause progress!!!

Richard, the builder who is implementing our ideas is on our wavelength....he pauses with us when we hesitate and understands our inpromptu thoughts.

When we( Catherine and I) first arrived at Kibas's stall, we had no idea how we were going to integrate our paving and tree idea into the site....

We paced our site, observed and discussed, backwards and forwards until we realized that most of our materials and ideas were staring us right in the face...

The concrete lintols which lay there in an uneven fashion were there for a reason, they are steping stones to the slab and act as a platform for drainage.

We wanted to level these lintols so that they would form a level surface, and add paving to increase the surface area, as the stall has the double function of acting as a shop and a gathering spot for his friends.

Next to the stall is a pile of rubble. Rubble attracts rubish, so this space has naturally become an informal dustbin... At first we wanted to remove the rubble and 'dispose' of it.

A fine idea yet, disposing in Kwathema often means dumping onto another site... We decided to break this cycle and start thinking how we can use the rubble on the site. With the help of Richard we are going to use the rubble( which is mostly stones and broken pieces of concrete) to make another slab...In it's place we are putting a dustbin...

We have had a lot of luck with aquiring the materials.... Mrs. Pemba from Pemba hardware, gave us 335 brocken clay bricks and Adrian Turgel from Liebermann Pottery gave us about 100 ceramic saucers....These, together with blue tiles we cast into the concrete slab....

We had so much fun designing the pattern, as the saucers came in different colours...

Catherine aquired some trees from the council, we picked two Sycamores for our site...

Divine intervention

Mood: Anxiety

Song in mind: Hillsong-Glorify your name

Site: Entokozweni Primary School

Mission: Complete Seating and surface bed

Glory to God, when we arrived on site in the morning, we found a third person working. It had become clear that our original bricklayers didn't have the skill of laying bricks. Thami took over the project as if it was his own; talk about self-employment. He completed the seating and managed the mixing and pouring of the surface bed. We finally had hope that we could actually see the project fulfilled by opening day, which is this coming weekend.

Getting Warmer

It’s starting to warm up a little now. I was pleased for this because my hands were really sore the previous 3 days this week due to working in the cold with no gloves. Bring on the warm weather- I’ve had enough of this cold now.

A lot happened on site today. The balustrade was going very well. We started installing some of the round horizontals into the balustrade and this made the balustrade look ‘the business’! I especially like how light the balustrade reads in the context of the building- this is exactly what we wanted to achieve in our design and I got a good feeling knowing that we had achieved that.

A huge front end loader was on site today cleaning up the big mound of rubble that had been left after the last front end loader was on site. It was so great to see that disgusting mound of rubble and rubbish getting smaller.

I finished installing the remaining 2 long props and I have to say- they look great! I can’t wait to see them painted. I think Guy shared my same enthusiasm for the painted props because as soon as he got to site this morning he began priming the props for paint.

white on black

gareth and i met at build plumb and tile. he bought blue paint for his paired project. i ordered the final shuttering and polystyrene required for our tagging kwathema moulds. mario was very obliging and outstandingly helpful after last saturday’s abacus-blocks delay. laserfab called to notify me that our steel alphabet was ready for collection. we went to kwathema via troyeville to collect them. they were so perfect and slick and exactly what i had hoped for. each letter was individually labeled and packaged. rupesh and flavio had been so obliging and generous with our tight deadline and minuscule budget. catherine and guy went to kwa thema via kerry at fischer to collect another fifty anchor bolts.

on site, i assumed the role of tyre-bollard painter. the wind was relentless - we had strung up danger tape around our new grassy oasis and it flapped in the wind like the black bag kites. the noise was so serene and surreal. i felt calm and content. i was the sole proprietor over my bollards; my own agent. nobody to consult and nobody consulting me. my mind was still and my concentration intense. the tape oscillated insistently with the rhythms of the wind.

i completed the khumbuza street bollards and surrendered to the battle of the wide brush upon the narrow treads. the white on black.