Day 13

Another very very brrrrrr... start to the day again! With even more of an edge to it knowing that there's a heatwave currently going on back in Blighty...grrrrrr!. Three years without a decent summer, then as soon as we're out of the country the sun finally shines for more than a day in England! But still, given the choice of a (proper) summer in the UK or a chilly winter in Africa, we'd still rather be here.

Tammy and Romeo picked us up first thing, and uncharacteristally, we were all ready to go. (Err..I'm not! - Dad)

Waterhole inspection complete - more animal tracks, including some springbok today - it was back up to the Barn. I got on with making the windows and side-door waterproof with silicon, Kira priming the window woodwork, Max cementing the very last of the cracks, and Ines rechecking our flipchart sheets that we had worked on with Tammy the previous night. We wanted to prepare as much information as we could ready for a visit from Gerhard and Catherina, who were due to come down to Hopewell at some point today.

Proper planning prevents porr performance, probably

Catherina had not long returned from a very busy few days in Jo'berg the day before and was keen to come and see how we were all getting along, and after having a good look at the now much bigger waterhole first, came up to the Barn. It's quite uncanny, but they always seem to sense it when our hope diminishes, and reassured us before we could even mention our concerns, that we wouldn't be returning home without some acceptable degree of achievement. We don't know if it's their ability to read people very well, or their sensitivity to the situations of others, but whatever it is, we were very glad of their reassurances, as well their genuine appreciation of what we had already achieved so far.

Gerhard again explained the difficulty in assigning an already thinned out Kuzuko maintenance staff, and the complications in obtaining outside casual workers here (something we all agreed we were getting a bit desperate for!), which we fully accept and understand. Despite the unemployment here, it's not simply a case of calling a job centre and having a qualified carpenter or accredited builder arrive the next day. It's more a case that if you ask 60 jobless people here if any of them are carpenters, then you'll immediately have 60 hands raised in the air!

However, Gerhard promised us that whatever happened, we would get at least a couple of guys at the start of the week to help us get a lot of what's left of the donkey work done in the shortest time frame as possible. If there's anyone that can move mountains, or in this case, bodies to large amounts of bricks and shale, it's Gerhard!

They also helped to address our concern that our lack of expertise in some areas - such as the flooring, building steps up to the building and some of the interior decor aspects - wouldn't leave us enough time to concentrate on the educational side of the project, such as the planning, obtaining and preparation of the exhibits and interactive activities for the children, by getting in touch with a friend of Gerhard's, who does and has done a large amount of the work on the Kuzuko Lodge buildings. They would contact him as soon as possible, and see if he can take some time out to visit the Barn and advise us on what we need to do to do a good job, as well as helping us get everything done that we can't do.

To help with other areas, for instance obtaining some specific materials we will need from other old and unused buildings located at other Kuzuko properties, Gerhard said he would take us out to them the next morning and see what we could salvage from them. One place apparently still has the sliding doors we could use to replace the broken hinged versions that currently hang in the front entrance, which would be great as the hanging doors aren't actually the original design, but were in fact the sliding type. Also relevent, it may have been the hanging doors that contributed a large part to the problem of the The Big Crack on the front of the Barn.

We all felt a lot happier, and considerably more positive after our chat wtih them, and all of us look forward to tomorrow, where we can enjoy a nice change of surroundings and exploring the other properties, and to next week, where we hope we're able to take even greater strides towards our goal of turning a tatty old barn into a really good educational centre.

The only downside to our meeting was not being able to give all our attention to a terrific thunderstorm that began raging about half way through our discussions. That, and (unusually) forgetting to take some pictures of the events!

Bouyed with more confidence, it was back to work again, but not before some well deserved fun, and a bit of a photoshoot with the kids :)

Max discovers that Kira with a towel is a formidable opponent

Photo troll!

HEY! I said NO MORE PICTURES!

I'd rather be...cementing

Ready...Aim....Squirt!

Later in the afternoon, Max and I dug up the corner of the Barn to see if the foundation wall at the front was deep enough and strong enough that we could safely remove the remnants of the slope, in order to build new steps below the main entrance. We pickaxed and shovelled until we reached the bottom, and concluded that yes, it was deep and strong enough to remove what's left of the slope. During the digging, we came across a few insects; some kind of tiny praying mantis, many very dodgy looking spiders, and more scarily, what looked like some kind of snake, trying to make good his escape by burrowing back into the dirt and rocks. Unfortunately, during the pickaxing we appeared to have chopped into his tail. (which later fell off completely, and strangely kept moving by itself for a good couple of hours - talk about a zombie snake...uuhhhuurrgh)

We managed to capture it without getting bitten, which was quite difficult as he was a very slippery and agile customer, despite his tail injury, and kept it in an old pot ready for Tammy and Romeo to identify. Then, not ten minutes later, we found another! This time without chopping bits of it off. Not knowing what they were, we put it in different pot, just in case they tried to eat each other.

Let us pray....ing mantis

He probably wants to kill us

Surprisingly stronger than he looks

This kept moving for hours.....shudder

It later transpired that what we had caught were two Cape Legless Skinks. A type of lizard that there is surprisingly little known about them apparently, as their particular species group is quite large.

After a busy and mostly productive day in many ways, it was time to wrap up and go home. A quick pic of the family and our excellent escort for the day, Romeo, before we left, we had almost finished when I picked up a pot of the blue paint to see what we should put the paintbrushes in until the next day. Then....disaster struck.....

What I thought was a virtually full pot of paint with its lid securely on, was in fact a virtually full pot of paint with its lid completely unsecured. As I picked it up, the lid came off and spilled most of its contents. No biggie in itself, except for the fact that almost directly below, other than the floor....... was Kira :(

The paint went over her old shoes, her nice new fleece jacket, her coolest pair of trousers, but worst of all, all over her head. Oh noes! Poor Kira! The paint was on her neck and all over her hair. It was the most unfriendly and stickiest substance, meeting the worst possible and most difficult thing to remove unfriendly and sticky substances from, in the building.

We all rushed to grab something to remove it with as quickly as possible. I say we all, what I actually mean is I rushed around to grab something while Ines roared with laughter and Max grabbed the camera and snapped away, saying "That's one for the blog.." Romeo also laughed at first, until he realised it was a bit more serious, and stood helpless and uncomfortably by, ready to help if he could. To be fair, once she had stopped laughing, Ines did join us trying to remove what we could from Kira's hair with a towel and thinners. I genuinely thought that it was going to need so much chopping out that she would end up looking like she had been to a blind hairdressers suffering from Parkinsons.

Wrapping an old sheet around her, we took a very dejected and pitiful Kira home, where luckily, we managed to get evry last bit out, with the aid of a lot of laquer thinners and many liberal applications of shampoo and conditioner, until she gradually returned to her usual, happy self :)

The worst bad hair day she's ever had

Kira considering how a bob might suit her at this point

Taken just minutes before disaster fell

For once, the beautiful sunset on the ride home went largely unappreciated.