First time home owners
It’s amazing what can get done in two weeks. Our build team has turned piles of wood and cardboard boxes into a house in less than two weeks!
Missing out on all the fun
We got a house up… but I wasn’t there to see it! We’re half a week into our first build trip with ten guys working sun up to sundown. Posts in the ground to roof on top took only 4 days! Me and Rhett are still here, Rhett’s dad Gary Read more…
So… where are our missionaries?
Our other means of communication is when Kovol people hike over to the Pal missionaries a 4-hour hike from them. Several times now Kovol people have come over to ask “So… where are our missionaries?”
Purchasing building materials – its hard!
Buying building materials takes AGES! Part of that is our own inexperience. None of us have managed a construction project before; or thought about an entire house’s plumbing needs; or anything else for that matter. We’ve managed to cobble together a list but is it all we need? Is the thing I just got a quote for something that was on my list? I need something to join PVC pipes together is that a join, coupling, union or collar; or something else? What do we call it in Britain, what do Americans call it and what’s it called here in PNG?
So we spent a few days getting quotes and familiarising ourselves with what we needed. The rest of the time though has been dealing with hardware stores here, and we can only sigh deeply when we think about it.
Change of plans (again)
We’ve set aside 3 weeks to do it, which is a really long time for shopping, but we’ve found hardware stores to be endless sources of delay here in PNG. You want to buy those screws? Sorry the system is down – try again tomorrow. We’ll deliver it tomorrow, 2 weeks later…
Land signing
The guys in the Kovol team are just back from spending 6 days in Kovol for a land signing agreement. The goal of our trip was to get a contract signed that would give us a bit of land we could build our houses on.
The cut list
Preparing to move to a new house is a big deal. Building a house requires even more preparation. Building a house in the bush – that’s even more work!