A short week, but never the less it was not short of excitement. I rented a compact machine for two days to compact the sand in preparation for casting the floor.

We need a total of 6300 cement blocks for the building, and I told the community that they need to produce minimum of 360 blocks per day, using twelve bags of cement. So far they molded about 4300 blocks.

Monday the community did not have money to buy food for the workers so, they were hungry and left at lunch. Tuesday the same and Wednesday, twenty people came, but they were tired and produced only 120 blocks, using only four bags of cement.

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On Thursday, December 24th, I traveled to Kpando to meet with Bishop Forson regarding digging a borehole for his school. Work was not scheduled at the Airfield School on Christmas Eve.

I received a call from my contractor that the whole community showed-up for a half day work, 65 people including some youngsters. This was my Christmas present, am I going to trade it back on Monday? Did the wheel turn? are we in the clear? We will know Monday after this four day weekend.

So, last week after the meeting with the assembly on Wednesday, the two groups were instructed to join so we should have a reasonable number of people on the site. On Thursday, the day after the big meeting, nothing changed. I burned another fuse and after a whole day of negotiation we compromised and agreed that the two groups will join only for the casting of the floor but each person will need to be excused for not showing up to work. The agreement was written in Ewe and signed by seven of the community elders.

If things will go right, we will cast the floor after the first of the year. The walls will take about two to three weeks. The Roof is next,. hopefully we will start not later than the beginning of February. I hope that the weather will cooperate and will not give us any surprises.

And the saga continue.

Happy New Year to our family and friends around the world

Surprisingly, at this very Christian country, where stores name are "by the grace of god beauty shop" etc, nothing much was happening at X-mas time.  No gift buying, decorations or family get together.  Just another day to go to church.  Many businesses were opened.

At the construction site, this week was marked by power struggle, as the "Elders" tried to control the work. Ewe people are known to be hard-headed.

Benny requested that they sign another letter, written in Ewe, requiring a community member who does not come to work to obtain a permission from the group leader.

Benny delivered a letter to the Regional Director of Education, reporting the current situation in the school, requesting good teachers for the Airfield Community.

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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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