22nd April 2006 Saturday

(A page adapted from the daily report)

It was a depressing day today, the owner of Site two had died last night, I had heard the siren of an ambulance. That is why we did not work in Kafful Garh today, except check the block making machine. It had to arrive from Bagh on our truck, and we had to take the sizes of blocks and check if all parts of the machine were sent or not. Unfortunately the loader had forgotten to load the motor and now we will have to wait one more day before starting the production.

We went to Hans Chowki as decided to meet Shahid and inspect the progress of our house three. There seemed to be some difficulty for the masons to level the DPC probably because they did not use a steel trowel to level the wet concrete. The owner of the house wanted to discuss a lot of things regarding the roof. He wanted us to make a pitch roof instead of the flat roof that we had earlier discussed. But I guess this is all a part of work, you discuss one thing and then the owner wants something totally different, and we have to adapt accordingly because after all he is the one who will be living in this house. But it was a little disappointing for all of us. Because then we will have to rework a lot of things.

At 2:30 we visited the site where someone was willing to sell his stones to us. It is one of the prettiest places to be. Surrounded by large trees and the ground covered with lush green grass, and it is fun to chase all the chameleons around. The quantity looked insufficient and we will have to think of other alternatives as well.

At three we left the site and started our 2 hour ride towards Kafful Garh for the night. On the way we visited some new under construction buildings for a school and a house, and also invited those people to visit our project. We had to stop at the Bagh base to collect a few things and do some shopping in the bazaar. It was late when we finally did reach here and all of us were very hungry, as we did not have anything for lunch. It looked like we will have to stay hungry because the cook had disappeared and there were no leftovers in the kitchen. But Maggie Noodles saved the day.

We had a long long meeting after that deciding about the sections of the buttresses and walls of site one, using or not using the metal wire or the wire-mesh and chicken mesh.

The septic tank issue, the false ceiling and the repairing of toilets even if they are not a part of our project were finalized. Everything is becoming complicated with time. We have to find a good plan for the transportation of plastic sheets from Lahore and it has to be done as soon as possible.