Well, another warm sunny day in Kisumu. They are having hotter than usual weather here – just like you are having colder than usual there. I don’t really know which is worse! You might think that you have a fly or a ant crawling on you but then you realize that it’s just sweat rolling down! The big challenge is to drink lots of water. Brad said the other day that he had 4 bottles of his 1.4L water jug and was surprised that he had had just that much water – let alone the coffee/tea that you would also drink. And the water is never cold – actually it’s more like it was boiled and sat in the teakettle because it was forgotten – warmer than room temperature – but thinking about it – that must be our “room temperature”!!
We hired 2 more men to help the that we had previously to finish the final coat of cement. See the process….. They have made the outside of the building very smooth – ready for Dave to put the final coating and then it can be painted.
The first coat of cement we did ourselves. This is the 2nd coat – that needs to be 30 mm deep (1 1/4″) in total on the outside & inside of the wall. They throw the cement onto the wall with their trowels coating it completely and then take a large steel beam to level it even and rub it down to a level mark. Then they come back over it after it is either well set or dry and apply more cement and this time use their wooden trowels to rub it smooth (picture 2). Then along comes the wheelbarrow with the final coat of cement that is splashed on again (you can see the more shiny spot in the centre of the picture) and then that is very smooth trowelled to get to the final finish. All the while, we have other men manning the wheelbarrows, picking up the cement that is on the verandah floor and at the cement mixer batching the cement.
We have taken off the metal from the latrine (we are still hoping to use it on the roof of the latrine) and have now done another curb to make sure that we have no leakage either in or out of the pit for the years to come. (I know it still looking like the metal is still there but it’s not!)