Zambian Workers

Even though we haven’t worked with the Zambian building crew every day, we have got to know a few of them quite well. Emmanuel worked with us on the doors and locks and the formwork and concreting for the school benchtops. We also had him on the roof to show him how to do ridge capping.

Geoffrey is the welding man and can really make anything you want out of steel. He picks up what you want him to do very quickly and a basic sketch is all he needs, He is making all the steel door frames for the new dorms and Buseko House.

Nyamba looks after the electrical work and the plumbing as well as lots of other things on the construction site.

The guys write a daily and weekly report that gets sent through to John. And though the output is less when John isn’t there the Zambian workers continue at a good pace and keep the construction moving along.

Musonda is the pickup man who goes to all the suppliers and get whatever is needed each day. There are no accounts with suppliers here. Everything is cash. So Musonda often travels with a lot of Kwacha in his pocket. Many of the suppliers have a thing with the pickup people like Mysonda called “topup” – this is where the ask “ Do you want top up?” meaning “ will we add extra to the bill and split it “ – Rekays – the big Indian owned hardware is notorious for this form of corruption. Musonda told John “ did you know the last driver you had always got “top up”. It is good to know that Musonda is an honourable man who can’t be corrupted by the suppliers. Musonda has also helped us with sorting Hudson’s stuff.

Daniel is the maintenance man for Buseko and also does a lot of the driving dropping kids off to the clinic for their HIV check-ups, and taking people here and there. And he painted the external doors of the high school while we were there. It was Daniels house that had a wall fall down while we were there. John had some of the Grace workers go and put in a proper foundation and concrete block wall to fix it.