Termite Armageddon

You will remember from last nights blog that I fell asleep content with having delegated the termite prevention to Norbert. It was he that had suggested that we might have to make plans for keeping termites away from the College. I, of course, did not think that this was a problem, that is until we arrived on site today.

Time for Armageddon

There must have been at least 10 - 12 of these termite mounds scattered around the site, and these 2 were 4 feet high.

Now being a man believing in delegation, I turned to Norbert to see how he was planning to get rid of these insects, and caught this rather studious photo which I very much like. I wonder what form of armageddon Norbert has planned for our not so friendly termites

Studious German

We had come to the site to lay out the platform for the beginning of construction which starts on Saturday, and had arranged for Kayitare and his son Jeff to meet us there. They are confident that the bulldozer should take about 4 days to remove the soil and to level the area. We are not quite so confident because there is a lot of earth to move - watch this space!

Roger and the team set about the measurements - first the 9 metres across the Nonko Road, then 51 metres up from the middle of the main Tanzania highway - Norbert took that measurement rather speedily! Then directly west for 20 metres then the College length, then ten metres up to get the width and finally the last measurement back to the Nonko Road.

Best view of Rog!

Now with stakes marking each corner, the only matter was the level, and for that a thodelite and ruler - just a wee ruler. You may well wonder why Roger is measuring the sky, but this is a real attempt to measure the fall of the ground - 5 metres to be exact - hence my observation that there is a lot of earth to move!

So after 3 hours work in 30 degree heat we finished the laying out of the site ready for Monday.

Observant readers of this blog will note that I have given you nothing but good news. Well I know that is rather unusual, but then I am pretty upbeat. But for consistency I had better mention the wee matter that the construction certificate says we are building a GUTURAMO (residential house) and not a College - signed by the Mayor of Kigali and the Mayor of Kicukiro.

Well we do have signed drawings for a College, so we strongly suspect that this is a typo, but you can imagine what Garlic thought when he read this!!

On Saturday we are hoping that the local Mayor, Paul the pastor and the head of the local neighbourhood will come and dig the first sod, which will be very exciting. I think we may just be seeking a  bit of reassurance about the typo, prior to the bulldozer arriving.

Nothing in Rwanda is simple, but then we did not expect it to be so!