Here came Monday and the saga continued. It looks like nothing can change the poor-man mentality that cannot see farther than the edge of their noses and only a few showed up to work at 8:00AM. My “Contractor" surprised me again with alterations to the building plan and changes to the duration of some of the processes that extended my schedule by a few weeks.

OK, if this is the case and we need to catch up, why can’t the community work on Saturdays? So, I received another lesson in Ghana‘s culture. “On Saturdays we go to funerals “.

I am trying to accept the reality and l leave to the higher powers the fate of this school. We all understand that as soon as the rain starts, usually in mid-January, the construction will slow down as the farmers return to their fields.

If work continues at this pace we will start the floor concrete casting in mid January and hopefully will start the roof sometime in the first half of February. We just extended our visas to three more months, they expire March 14^th.

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At Airfield School, the children helped unload the white-wood boards and all the tools off the truck to the building site. Truckloads of cement bags, sand, stones and steel rods are already at the site. Benny was able to negotiate a good price for all materials. Monday morning the community members will start molding the blocks. (This weekend they all traveled to a funeral at another village.) Benny is patiently teaching them how to calculate, measure, estimate cost, plan schedule, think one step ahead, ask if you do not understand, be on time and deliver what you have promised.

Each day there is a new surprise…The draftsman changed all the measurements and some of the specifications that Benny gave him. "It’s OK, later you can do whatever you want", he told Benny. Bennny didn’t go along with that and the draftsman is now redoing his drawings. The contractor called the draftsman to get the measurements… and the site was pegged and marked with the wrong measurements. Luckily Benny caught it on time, and the next day they remeasured the site, moved the white boards. Every day Benny finds another item that was not included in the estimate. The building is 3 ft above ground, due to the wet ground. How about steps to climb up? Foundation for the steps? The steel bender needs a bench. Why did not you think about it before he comes? In the process I am getting a good education on construction in Ghana. I now know the right proportion when mixing the cement, sand and stones. Except that here they measure by wheelbarrows and head pans. The 18"x 9"x 6" blocks for the foundation are one bag of 50kg cement mix with 14 head pans of sand. The 18"x 9"x 5" blocks for the building are one bag of cement, two wheelbarrow of sand and two wheelbarrow of sawdust. Benny lives, walks, sleeps, dreams the project. He is thinking of ideas to raise the last $10,000 so that he can finish the school.

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