Mayanjane Project and an African Church Service.

We are now half way through the project stage and i have to say it is beginning to look really impressive. Myself and the St Helen and St Katharine girls are building a Skills Centre for women in Mayanjane community. When we arrived at the project site 5 days ago the foundations had been dug and there was a huge pile of earth in the middle. So there was a challenge to complete it in 9 days. And to add to the mix, the Skills Centre was larger than we thought.

La'Salette, who we are working with, has been donated two industrial sewing machines by a company in South Africa, and the original plans were too small to incorporate these machines into the original building plans. The building is now 40m x 25m, and on day 6 we have one wall completed, two walls up to the window frames and three quarters of the floor flattened. Our aim is now to have all the walls completed, the windows and doors in, the floor laid and the roof on. A tall order but achievable. All the girls are working very hard mixing cement, grouting, moving bricks and shifting dirt, manual labour to the extreme! Happy yet exhausted people at the end of every day.

We did have half a day off yesterday although it was an early start. Up at 5.30am to get to the project site for sunrise, followed by some hard grafting until 9.30 before the local church service at 10.00. The girls loved the service saying that it was a true and unique African experience. The singing was vibrant and we all stood and clapped with the congregation, despite the fact that some of the hymns were in SiSwati! The local pastor was really delighted that we attended and couldn't stop thanking us for coming along. The whole service was rather humbling and will certainly be remembered.

The opening ceremony of the Skills Centre is planned for Friday, I think the national paper will be attending along with some government officials. Better get back to mixing cement then.....