The Kitchen

Currently, I am back in rotterdam. Sadly, we could not finish the kitchen before we left. As things work differently in Zimbabwe and everyone uses the saying 'time time', everything happens on a relaxed and not so planned basis. As I mentioned earlier, our builder had dissapeared. We did find another one (who was actually way better than the first one), but he did not let us do that much. We got to help with the side jobs. So I have walked around with a wheelbarrow to carry stones, sand and cement powder from one place to another and I flattened the cement foundation. It was funny to see how cement actually is made. In the Netherlands you see those huge trucks with a circling middle but in Zimbabwe we had to do everything with a shovel. Stones, sand and cementpowder were put all together (just on the ground in one pile) and water was added. While someone added water we had to stir the mix round and round and finally put it in the wheelbarrel to bring it to the foundation. As you can imagine this was realy tiring. From that point, the builder took over, he laid all the bricks and did the measuring. It was a bit boring for us but I think good for the long term perspective, as I expect the kitchen to live longer now. When we left. all the bricks were there and only the roof was left to be build. That happened today. Alex our zimbabwean tutor stayed behind and finished the roof with his dad, brother and the builder. I am really happy with the kitchen and, which is even more important, the elderly can cook every day now without the risk of a collapsing kitchen! I posted a few pics on the building of the roof :)