It's Not Always About Us...

So I'm giving you a virtual tour of PHA as of this week. It's so exciting to see how things are progressing. At the beginning, it was hard to see work getting done since it was all about digging the foundations. Now that so much of the building is now walls going up and roofs going on, every day brings new changes.
Some of you may remember Project 640, our first volunteer group that spent a week here in February. They worked on a nursery where we could start raising trees to plant. To date we've planted over 5,000 trees! The trees are very important as there is no shade on the property and there are serious erosion issues that will be helped by the trees. As they are thinned out they can also be used for firewood.

The 640 will be surprised to find that the little trees that were planted (like these here)...




...are now this big in just 5 months! It's really unbelievable how fast things grow here! All along our huge fence the plants that were inches tall in February are now almost to the top of the fence in places. Good water, good sun, cool nights...a perfect combination!



Wouldn't you like to come and volunteer? You can, you know. Just contact Peace House Foundation and they'll get you set up, no problem!


You can sit here in the morning or evening, sipping tea, and looking at Mt. Meru in the distance. This candlabra tree is actually a giant cactus and is the only one on the site. It's fantastic!

You will retire at night to one of our comfortable guest houses. Although you will be on-site and able to participate in the daily school activities, the guest houses provide a quiet respite in the evenings.

Your guest house does have a kitchen, but you'll want to take some of your meals here in the dining hall with the students and get a sense of typical Tanzanian fare. Breakfast here is typically tea and bread and maybe some uji (like runny Cream of Wheat). Lunch includes ugali (like stiff grits--filling but not a lot of taste), beans or rice, sometimes cooked veggies. Dinner is a variation on lunch, but may include a sauce made with meat or cooking bananas. Fresh fruit (whatever's in season) may be available as well. Eating with the students will also give you an opportunity to get to know them, ask questions, and give them time to ask questions of you.

I do like this picture a lot. It's the road going through the teacher housing. It looks like we have an actual town going up here! It looks so cool! Actually, PHA will be a community when it's done, which I like very much. I like the idea of all of us being a part of something so new and raw and uncharted.

Brick-making in action. We actually have a brick-making machine that makes 2 bricks at a time. We also have the manual way which makes 1 brick at a time. For either way, they shovel cement into a form, pull down a press/lid, and then lift the form and slide the blocks out on a board. It's a time consuming process for sure.

The administration/classroom building has finally hit ground level (after working on 8 ft. deep foundations). The tiny blue shed in the background is the guard house for the maingate.

By the way, I'm taking no responsibility for the quality of this pic. I'm having to upload each pic 3-4 times (at around 2 minutes per upload) and I just can't explain why some pics cooperate and some just turn ugly on me.

The same is true for the dorms. Now that building is at ground level, things will look like they're moving very fast (and maybe they really are!) It's a bit intimidating to see the footprints of such large buildings and think of the number of students that will be living in them!


Here's our house, getting more done every day. It's funny--they've put in the wooden door jambs, but the walls are still rough blocks. Interesting.




Whoops--does this pic mean I slipped something in about us? Sorry.

OK, that's it. I have some more great pics, but after 3 days, this is as far as technology here will let me go and so I'm done. Really, it's much more interesting in person--come and see for yourself!