Had a great Madiba day spent at Devland Soweto Education Campus. A very ambitious project run by Deborah of Growing up Africa. A R30 million rand project being build by donations and assistance from big names in the construction industry. Students from universities can get first hand experience seeing how different parts of the construction process work.
After a very disastrous start to the morning trying to de-ice Aya's window and it repeatedly frosting over every time I wiped it down, to the screws rattling out of the back latches and then securing everything in place so it couldn't fall out, I eventually managed to leave, an hour later than planned. I thought I was going to be so late considering I am still capped at 45km/h. With my back route directions taped to the dashboard I headed into the unknown. The GPS wanted me to go on the highways, hahahaha, yeah right! I ain't ready for that yet. :-)
It turned out from a panicked start of this is total madness and unsafe, to a rather leisurely cruise down past Nasrec to Southgate and then nipped into Soweto. I did have a taxi reverse into me, my heart jumped into my throat, my mouth went dry and when the driver jumped out I thought this was it, I had made a big mistake coming this side of town. As soon as he saw me he came and apologised for not seeing me and I got an inquisitive thumbs up and off he went. Fortunately there was no damage. A bit shocked and rattled I continued through the township. Got plenty of waves and smiles and by the time I reached the Campus I was enjoying the days adventure. Turned out to be only an hours drive.
We packed sandbags for building the walls of the campus. The geotextile was donated by Fibertex and made into bags by Stitchwise. What followed was a whole lot of back breaking work by a great turnout of companies that was initially a competition to see who fills the most bags but eventually in the chaos became, just fill as many bags as one can.
What a great bunch of people. Plenty of funny chirp, singing, and dancing. Best part was taking it in turns to play supervisor with one of the teams, a fine art of striking the correct pose with a look of indifference, pretending to be on a fake phone call, smoking a cigarette or having a cup of coffee while watching people work. Tough life. :-)
Afterward, I handed out some chips and cool-drinks to the local kiddies that Deborah talks about who are always curious about everything that goes on on site. Some still in their pajamas as they had been watching since their parents left for work. They were very fascinated with the Tukaya and even asked where they could buy one. We chatted happily while having drinks kept nice and cold in my mini fridge thanks to my awesome solar system from BushPower.
On the way back I was much more relaxed and took in the scenery. After all the manual labour I was starving and managed to grab a very suprised McDonalds at the drive-thru. I guess I'm going to have to get used to the strange looks and questions.
I am very happy to have spent the day volunteering thanks to my company, will be doing some pro bono work to assist the campus. Did some great networking and got some amazing feedback on the project.
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