Construction and attempted consummation

My diligence in blogging has been as slack as a our bathroom banana leaf walls. But that is not to say that events have not continued to occur in hectic, hilarious or heavy style. As is the trend in writing styles across the world, the title is written in reference to the content of the text and I've maintained this sensible tradition in the typing of such a text, namely this one. Construction has indeed been the activity around which my life has been revolving. My developing carpentry skills under the occasional watch of Master Builder Daz have been used in the construction of six 700kg and 20 metre long A-frames. Each one is hoisted on the shoulders of 20 men and lifted bit by bit with the help of scaffold onto the roof. Six down, 18 more to go. The battens are then marked and cut before the tin roof is placed on this cutting edge designed 'passive cooling' ceiling insulation. I've been helping Valley (aged 31, 10 kids), Moses (25, wants a mzungu girlfriend) and a couple of others master the reading of a tape measure and a few other subtleties of building - most of which I learn moments before from Darren. Never have I enjoyed a job so much. Building really is an enjoyable profession, particularly in this context of having to use careful problem solving to overcome issues of horrendous quality of material.

On Thursday afternoons I run money management classes for the House Mamas, and they slowly using hitherto unused parts of their mind to consider their lives in terms of income and expenditure and both of these in the future. The main concept that has really hit home with some of the slightly more 'affluent' mamas (ie. $15 a week income) is that you don't have to live to the extent of your means and money can and should be saved for the future.

The attempted consummation was the occurrence of a rather more serious event. One of our Tanzanian employees, Aileen (age 19), was the victim of an attempted marriage. Which as far as we know actually means rape and possibly also marriage, maybe. Ambushed by 4 men, they tried to drag her away before one of our House Mamas, the noble Mary, came to her defence only to be kicked in the chest, knocking her down in front of her children. She managed to let off the danger cry (woooooeeeeeeeeee) which set the community running to her defence. Some were more infuriated than others by the archaic and misogynist practice. The following week was filled with community meetings, fugitives, back room deals being protested against and finally....who knows, it all kind of petered out after a little time and people began to get on with their daily lives again - the recent past or the approaching future are matters that do not concern most here and are things the most will probably never consider. This is one of our jobs in educating not just our mamas and our labourers (who we give lessons to after work), but this entire little community of Engo Sengiu.

The kiswahili is improving and I had an excellent lesson with Gertruda - a lady who lives down the road - today. Already after a couple of months the question is not how will we survive the next 10 months, but how will we survive leaving.