Hoping for … wall, teacher and student housing, …

We’d like to plant more trees and a garden to help with student food supply. This is waiting until we get funding for a wall that will also serve as security, and for our other construction projects. Currently for the few trees we’ve planted we’re using temporary measures to protect young plants against the donkeys, cattle, goats and pigs that wander freely through the property.

We would like to hire a qualified missions professor as assistant director later in the year and his family will need accommodation, as will the families of students arriving for the new 3 year Bachelor degree course.

The plan is for another house opposite the Dean of Students’ house (photo), currently shared by them with students for a dining room and kitchen facilities.

Several two-room apartments are planned for student family accommodation.

In the longer term we will need another classroom or a library building so we can use the current library as a second classroom.

The site will be getting full!

Working on … water tower and supply

Still waiting on running water as a concrete tower is built to house a plastic water tank. Pipes have been laid awaiting completion. A generator will pump the water from the deep well 200m away to the water tower once a day to fill it, and gravity will do the rest!

Adaptation and evolution ... of student dorms

First it started out as a storeroom and kitchen, with an outside loo and bathroom for visitors and staff. Then a shed was added on the end to house the solar batteries. Then two more identical rooms and bathrooms .. and hey presto! A student dorm!

Since the rooms aren't that big (actually about the same size as my dorm room in Bible college) a screened verandah was added as a lounge room.

We coped with the fact that we then didn't have a storeroom and kitchen by storing some stuff in the solar battery room and are now closing in part of the bottom of the water tower to be a storeroom. For this 6 month course Suzanne from Cameroon is cooking while her husband Luc teaches, so she's using her own kitchen in the teacher's house. We're thinking of maybe building a paillote (straw-roofed outside shelter) with a small kitchen for dining and outside seating facilities, similar to the local cafés.

Completion … of classrooms, admin and library

Inside is bright, cool and airy. And so much more roomy than our last place!

Some visitors asked why our classroom was so big. Several answers:
- It serves as a meeting room when we have lots of visitors for graduations etc. so needs to accommodate about 100 people seated,
- there are actually foundations ready to close off part of it eventually for a conference/group room and director’s office once we develop more (ie. Have built a second classroom or a new library where the current library will become a second classroom), and
- we’re thinking of the future when our classes will grow!

We had to have several additional shelves built for the growing library.