Week 8 - November 3, 2017

All the concrete floor slabs have now been poured, so the internal spaces are quickly taking shape, whilst the hollow block walls were filled with concrete to reach their full strength. A time consuming week of concrete mixing, the team worked through two national holidays in the middle of the week. There was good progress, however the satisfaction was marred by the arrival of rainy season in full force with heavy flooding around Second Mile that will certainly affect progress through November.

• The Education building has been fully excavated and the rebar cages are starting to be laid into the foundation trenches. With the repeatability of many of the construction standards, it is good to see how familiar many of the builders are becoming with the standards required of them.

• The concrete slabs being poured before rainy season properly started is a real success, as they would be especially difficult to pour in rain.

• As I was off to the Dominican for the weekend, Jenn was leaving for the US - it was very satisfying how organised we were in arranging for all the materials for the 10 days we could not purchase materials together. The funding is continuing to sustain good pace on the project.

• Rainy season beginning is always a hard time in Haiti, especially in a rural context. Many roads become harder to pass, deliveries become more difficult and many of our friends and employees suffer regular flooding at home.

• The road between New Start (the recovery center) and Strong Start has become very flooded, and it is clear there is still work to be done then. After the improvements to the road we had hoped to mitigate this problem, but evidently there is still progress to be made.

• Concrete pouring can be a slow process, and visually there are not huge changes, but things will move quickly once we start on the roof.

The concrete pouring will be more difficult in the rain, but we are determined! The education, kitchen and water tower foundations all need to be poured, and then blockwork can start on them.

• The lintels above the Prenatal building windows and doors are being made, and then the windows can be measured up and fabricated.

• Once the last few block courses are laid above the windows, we can start to fix down the timber wall plates and begin the roof construction, although a large roof, weather dependent, we should remain on schedule to finish in December.