Building work on our nursery classrooms is underway at Katiyo Primary School in Zimbabwe. A local team of builders began work on building our block of two nursery classrooms at the end of July/start of August.
The site first needed to be leveled which was more challenging than expected and the first team gave up after the first day, but with the help of a local business man who loaned his JCB work was soon underway again.
Current reports are that the foundations are in and the hard concrete floor is in the process of going down – my whatsapp has been full of pictures of bricks and concrete, but the next chunk of funds is needed to buy more building materials. This sounds straightforward, international banking it turns out is never as straightforward as you think it should be and our transfer was returned by the intermediary bank with an explanation that meant nothing to anyone. Lots of phone calls and many trips from the headteacher to the bank in Zim a good few hours drive from the school we finally had some answers and some new information which should hopefully mean that the transfer goes through. But international banking isn’t as quick as you think it is and it will take 3 to 5 working days for the funds to reach their destination and probably even longer than that before we know it is where it should be.
This transaction alone has taken almost 6 weeks now and lots of stress but we won’t give up, we will get these classrooms built and equipped with furniture, books and toys.
If you want to help – by making a donation, by donating a raffle prize, by making a bookmark please get in touch with Sharon her email address is her first name with bookmarkproject.co.uk after the at symbol.
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