Happy Easter, Jesus is alive!

We had been hearing an odd roaring noise coming from somewhere near the bee hives. After a bit of investigation we found what’s known as the lion bee. Apparently harmless this big bee makes a low pitch roaring sound (a bit like a lion!). Like a fool on April fools day we tried to take a pic but the lion bee eluded us.

Another busy few weeks have seen us lay an 80m water pipe, build a dog kennel, start a compost heap, plant a pyracantha hedge and a bee friendly flower garden as well as having a water tank tower built and finally the fowl run started. Inbetween this two more families have started broiler chicken projects.

We asked a local builder to build a brick water tank stand for us, similar to one we had seen in Harare. (Most tank stands here are built using metal). After a bit of deliberation we worked out a plan of how to build it strong enough to take our 5000ltr tank (we hope!)

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This cost a lot less than having it built out of metal and welded, so saved a few pennies. We were very pleased with his work and decided to ask if he could also help us build our fowl run.

It’s great to finally see the fowl run start to go up. The drier weather allowing the pit sand to be dug and delivered. Innocent working alongside the builder has been enjoying learning from an experienced builder and his brick work has improved greatly.

Another week should see it finished.

Talking of Innocent, he has been working with us full time for a while now and is a useful font of knowledge about many things. His help has been invaluable and we really feel he is God sent and will be comfortable leaving him in charge of things when we are not around.

We were pleased to be able to help two more families start chicken broiler projects

and have also fenced a small piece of land for another local family so they can start a tomato project. They will donate a percentage of their produce back to the charity so we can either sell to raise funds or give to some of our families.

Along with delivering the text books (see last blog) we also took time to visit Neuso Primary School again. We visited them 2 years ago looking to help with children living with disabilities attending the school but for various reasons we were not able to help at that time.
They currently have 15 children attending the school with various disabilities, 5 of which use wheelchairs. They know of another 10 local children who could be attending if they could get to school. They have a transport bike which was donated and run by Leonard Cheshire in the past to bring kids that are physically disabled to school. They are still unable to afford to pay a driver or fuel the bike, so it is not being used. They have wheelchair access to all classrooms and reasonable pathways around the school.

The big issue is still this bike and getting the kids to school and to pay for a support teacher. This costs around $200 a month (£170). We want to help and are looking to set up a chicken layers project with them which will enable them to raise the funds themselves to run the bike month on month and to keep it running year after year. We are looking at how we can raise the finances to set up this project.

With only a month to go until we return to the UK, we have been getting various other jobs done. Several more back breaking days were spent digging an 80m trench for our water pipe and a pit for a compost heap. Along with planting 22 pyracantha plants to start our hedge along the fence and we’ve planted a bee friendly flower garden.

The fruit trees are coming along nicely especially the bananas, mulberries and paw paw trees.

We haven’t as yet managed to attract any bees to our hives naturally and so are hoping to buy a few colonies for our hives before we leave.

And to end this blog please meet our trainee guard dogs (Ok puppies)

. 3 sisters, Storm (grey), Lightening (black with white tipped tail) and Thunder (black). We spent a weekend in the dog house (where I normally end up!) building them a home/kennel/crate. In time we hope they will guard our project, for now they just yap a lot.