Friday 12 August
"Today, you are going to help us build Jennifer a house", Benter - our host in Reru - announced. "We'll join the rest of the community and see how far they've got; you can run a craft workshop for the women of the village whilst the men put the structure in place; then, after lunch, you can help with the mudding!"
By now, Jennie and I were used to adopting different roles at the drop of a hat (we've been, at various times, EnglishTeacher/ social worker/ marketeer/ craft teacher/ UK ambassador / health worker/ new business developer and Yoga teacher) but 'house builder' was a new one for us. We looked forward to the challenge with some trepidation: 'how can a house be built in one day?', we wondered.
Fortunately, on Thursday, Jennie and I had visited a house built previously by the Aniga Women's Initiative, so we had a good idea what was going to be involved. Mary, the owner of the house, was a widow living with HIV and bringing up her three grandchildren on her own. She showed us proudly round her house: a two room square structure with mud walls and a corrugated iron roof; and discussed with us frankly how she had confronted her status, made it known within her community and struggled to the hospital for monthly appointments for the antiretrovials needed to control her condition. Jennie and I left feeling full of admiration for this brave lady, who is setting her community such a strong example of how to live with HIV.
On arrival at the site, we saw that the men of the village had placed wooden posts, cut from local trees, in holes in the ground to form the perimeter of the house. The women were carrying smaller posts and sisal (twine made from the leaves of a local sub-tropical plant) to the building site and Jennie and I joined them. Once all the carrying was over, we left the men to it and sat under a tree in the village, teaching the women how to make necklaces by rolling up pieces of glossy magazines to make beads, then dipping them into clear varnish to harden.
Once the house structure was complete, the women got to work. Donkeys pulled carts with water which were poured into an earth pit. Feet churned the water and earth into mud, which was wheel-barrowed to the house, where women flung great armfuls of it in rapid succession into the wooden framework and smoothed it into walls. Bodies worked together, the mud walls raised quickly, Jennie and I became soaked in mud and sweat and the excited would-be house-owner (Jennifer, a 24 year old widow with three children, also living with HIV) was chased away from the property until it was finished. Then the singing and dancing began.
Jennie and I gave house-warming presents of toys and clothes for the children and finally left: Friday 12 August proved to be a very special day for all of us and we were left with a concrete vision of what the Aniga Women's Initiative can achieve for the most disadvantaged in their community.
Rosalind Camp
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