We apologize for the delay between posts, but this is an exciting one! Our first concern in getting the center off the ground was obviously to find physical space. Our partnership with the St Pierre school group offered space at one of its two second cycle (middle school) sites. The land at this site is owned outright by the director of the St Pierre Schools, which ensures that the center will be able to remain at that location and not be at risk of losing its home to changes in a rental agreement.
Once we had decided on this location, we began working with a “master mason” to get an estimate on our original vision of a free standing space. Unfortunately, even after reducing the dimensions and switching to cheaper materials that space would still be beyond our current budget. We were looking at returning to a rental option, before Baïssou came up with the brilliant idea of asking the school director if we could contribute to the cost of finishing the school's unfinished third floor and get the use of some of that space. The estimate for this plan was in line with our budget, so we will have a large space (the size of two classrooms) for the library itself, with free use of the adjacent classrooms during non-school hours to give supplemental classes. There is an external stairwell that allows access to the space without disrupting students in class. Pictures will definitely follow.
We agreed on this estimate sometime last week, but then entered the baffling and frustrating world of sending money from the US to Mali. Western Union is the fastest option, but takes a substantial percentage of the money sent in fees. We decided the best option would be to set up a bank account here and transfer the majority of the money that way. This led to an interesting foray into the Malian banking system that revealed, among other things, that Malian banks take a small portion of the balance of a checking account each month in fees. While this was a frustrating process, it has produced worthwhile results and the first of the money arrived yesterday afternoon and construction starts today!
We plan to have the center ready for operation on November 1st!
The picture below shows me, Baïssou, Robert and “Vieux” (our mason/contractor) studying one of the various estimates along the way. Vieux is Baïssou's older brother and apparently built the apartment building we live in, along with many other buildings in the area. He lives in Niamakoro and two of his children attend the school where the center will be located. He tends to be a man of few words, but he says he thinks the project will be valuable to the neighborhood and is working for a fraction of his usual labor cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment