We waited four years and went through umpteen challenges to become totally above-board legitimate owners of this land, and now the work has begun with a vengeance!
It’s hard for you to understand the joy in this 30second clip. PTI (Partners Trust International) took the inspired decision not to use big time-efficient diggers to excavate the hillside in a day or two, and instead hire about 250 desperately poor and hungry unemployed folk from the local community to earn just under $2/day to prepare the land for construction in due course. $2/day may seem ridiculously little to a Western mind, but that’s $2 more than they would have got, and is above average for a wage in Burundi as a whole.
The locals were fully aware that machines could do the job more easily and quickly, and this gesture has given them total love, affinity and a sense of shared ownership and goodwill towards us moving forward. They expressed how our decision, which gives them several weeks of employment, will trickle down blessing to others (for example, hired nannies maybe earning 30cents/day to free up the mother to work for us), and thereby benefit many more than the 250 on site.
Beautiful!
Keep praying for this venture, for continued good relations with the authorities and the community, and for funding to pour in for the building and equipping of the clinic which in due course will (God-willing) grow into a fully-fledged hospital.
Bring it on!
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