Picking up where I left off.

It feels quite surreal to be sitting out here, in the same little house, in the same chair, with a same drink, having seen some of the same faces and having obviously visited the same building that so many times was my headache!

And surprise surprise… a small little problem! (something to resolve, nothing major).

The LCCU looks great! I was really afraid to be disappointed with it after all this time, not saying I’d do everything the same way, but at nearly one year of age, all the thatch is holding in place, the paint work looks as fresh as when I left and the courtyard battens (which I had never seen finished) work the way I hoped they would!

But, (and there is always a but), one of the things that I feared is already happening, or should I say happened. The battens were not installed to the full specification and as result one of the supporting lengths has slightly sagged and needs propping up. Nothing that will take more than 30min of work and a bit of string, for optimal result the piece should actually be changed completely (1hr work max), but it looks as though no one is actually too bothered by it… The other thing that is slightly concerning me is a new solar panel (for water heating) which is sitting on this same canopy. The canopy was not designed to sustain anything but its own wait, and over time 150lts of water will actually put quite a bit of stress on that structure… This new panel (which is quite ugly in it’s stting by the way) might also explain why a few trenches have been dug up in the concrete, but looking at them, I can make no sense of it… I will enquiry!?

Tomorrow I will go back and take some proper photos of the spaces and the building... Today Me’Lydia was not there and I feel as I need her permission to just go around taking pics of it.

But I digress (it was kind of inevitable that I would), I wasn’t even supposed to go and see the building till tomorrow, but being right next to the airport how could I resist… Anyway as I was saying the purpose of this trip (and this blog) is not for me to go down memory lane but to actually start up with Reiulf (the founder and leader of RRA, for whom I work in Oslo), Robin (head of Architecture at the recently re-branded A25, old A4A) and Pete (CEO and country director for K4L), as usual using Ntate Baba’s many talents, the new K4L centre.

The new centre will be a great addition to the youth of Lesotho and a great place to develop the K4L curriculum. In a nut shell K4L councils and teaches kids about HIV/Aids through sport, they do more than that engaging with the community and having already big numbers of active coaches for their programs working with kids all over the country, but put simple their aim is to “change people’s lives through sport (football)”.

Between the emotions of revisiting the LCCU (here I go again) and missing the equalizer goal of the big Lesotho premier league football match, the day was packed full with an introductory meeting and a cursory site visit.

The site looks really good, I’d say almost perfect (but it’s really what you do with it that counts) and it seems we are on the right track to try and get this one on the well started from the very beginning!