Team A....

This is Team A, our second group of volunteers from Leeds University. They have been living on site for a week now and are still hard at it....

The site is still being cleared to make way for the landscaping to begin (yet MORE digging, clearing, burning etc.) so unfortunately the tedium of shovelling and hoeing to get annoying bits of twig and twine out of the ground continues.

But, ever cheery, Team A are tackling the work with enthusiasm and even managing to dig whilst hungover (you can't hear the groans from this picture but I think they were all a bit delicate this day...!)

...and not only digging up of roots but the discovery of yet MORE cement lying under a thin layer of grass has caused a further delay to the proceedings - this has been a constant theme of the Leeds volunteers' experience this year; it seems that whilst the building was being constructed the builders mixed cement, plaster and mortar all over the place and we have to pick-axe through these layers of cement to get to the earth below so we can eventually plant some flowers! This involves many people with shovels and many trips with a wheelbarrow (easily the most difficult job on-site) breaking their backs and sweating like billy-oh ridding our site of big piles of cement and rubble! It might not feel like it at times but we are getting there...slowly!

But Team A have also been busy digging trenches. Honestly, there are trenches everywhere at the moment, some for laying pipes to carry water off the roof into an underground water catchment tank, some for laying small walls around different sections of the site and some trenches I think have been dug just for fun because Team A are trench-crazy!

Here's one trench being modelled by the trench diggers themselves!

Didn't they do well...?

Out first group of volunteers spent two weeks with us and worked themselves into the ground plastering, digging, hoeing, raking, burning, shovelling and wheelbarrowing. Here they are in action...



They plastered very long walls

No fancy modern technology like earth movers for our volunteers, all digging

and clearing of the land was done with shovels, hoes and wheelbarrows.

Not a pleasant task to undertake for two solid weeks!

You see? So much digging was done that shovels were splintered into tiny fragments!




















Trees were felled using nothing but brute strength!



When you work on a Soft Power site, you also get to clean your own long-drop toilets! Quickly.

We are sorry that the first group of volunteers had to have such a tedious time clearing our site and didn't get to do anything pleasant or fun but it was very necessary and now it is almost done...so big, huge, massive thanks to all of them!
This group have now left us to go and work at one of our schools and we have the group that were at the school with us for the next two weeks. Apparently there's fierce and ongoing competition between the two groups which seems to mainly focus on which group can drink the most in the bar but which also stretches to which group works hardest on site....check out the blog again to see some photos of the next group working and judge for yourselves!