1, 2... 3, Start!

It should have really been: On your marks, get ready… oh no, wait a second, maybe a little more, hmmm… not quite sure, oh yes, start! But either way here we go!

Camille and I got to Maseru exactly 10 weeks ago, full of energy and hoping for a lot to do! Can’t say we didn’t get what we were waiting for, there was plenty waiting for us to get stuck straight into… And that has been good, honestly!

What really hasn’t been so good is the time it has taken us to get some of the small projects going… The fence around Malibuseng was something we thought that we’d have up and finished in less than a month, and it was kind of looking promising, well once we had battled for a while with the Land Authority to establish the official limits of the site.

We had all the drawings ready, specifications written, a contractor lined up (more of a Building Unit from the local builders school), but when they gave us their quote, well let’s just say it looked a little inflated. So we played cat and mouse for a while, and eventually 2-3 weeks later (yes there was a bit of political instability, true, a stay away even, but still…) we gave up and just told him that he had 3 days to review his quote (and re-issue it, this time itemized), we also asked for a couple more quotes to see how it would all compare and got the neighbour’s contractor to start leveling the site (we had to do something, one can’ wait forever).

The deadline came for the quotes to arrive and we were informed that the Building Unit had decided not to submit, not really a surprise, as much as a disappointment, because it would have been a good way to work with the guys fresh out of school. Anyway our two remaining quotes were quite comparable and following a few more talks we managed to agree on most issues. So today we had our contractor on site and we started setting out the fence.

Actually it was the first time that it happened to any of us to have a contractor call and say that he was waiting… We were actually still in a meeting with the JTC that ran long (but that is a story for another day).

It’s taken a while, and we haven’t really got anywhere yet, but at least it’s a start!