Strathaven Scouts progress report - 6th August

Things are progressing well for the Strathaven Scouts group and activities are going to plan despite some delays and technical hitches.

The visit is not just about project work, the Scouts are taking every opportunity to enhance their experience of the visit. The Girl Scouts are very passionate about the children and enjoy giving them lots of attention. They are particularly moved by the poverty of the disabled people coming in for help and donate many of their own clothes. Let's hope they have some to bring back to Scotland. Here the girls are taking time out to share with some of the local children. They attract a lot of attention and judging by the photograph everyone is enjoying the experience of being together.

The BIG football match - Monze Scouts v Strathaven Scouts - the result? Strathaven lost the match despite Best. Best is a leading man in many ways as he is a Monze Scout who played in the 2008 fixture, speaks excellent English, is a fine diplomat and is very hands on with everything; he scored some goals for Strathaven and some for Monze!  As you can see - not quite Hampden Park is it? The score has not been revealed but given the size of the pitch there may have been some very tired scouts after the match.

On Sunday the scouts attended the service at Monze Mission Church led by Pastor Fundi - one of the HHI Z Trustees. It is tradition to attend the service when visiting Monze and it is their tradition to have the service run for 3 hours! The Scouts will have been warmly welcomed and will have enjoyed the singing led by a small group of ladies. For their part the Scouts sang My eyes have seen the Glory. We look forward to the DVD!

The Scouts then moved out from Monze and pitched their tents in Ntambo to crack on with the hammer mill hut -  building in earnest now that all materials have been purchased and transported to the site. This picture shows significant progress has been made. At the time of receiving the update this work has almost reached completion. The next stage is to put the roof on the building and this will be completed over this weekend (6th/7th) while the Scouts enjoy their time out Lochinvar. We look forward to those photos too.
 
Whilst the building work continues some of the Scouts have moved on to repairing broken window panes at Choongo school. This is work that will improve the learning environment for the children - if you have ever witnessed the Zambian rainy season you will appreciate that having glass in all the windows is a great help. There is a lot of work to do here but they are making excellent progress and should complete this work during the visit.

The Scouts return to Monze Sunday pm (7th August) to continue with the work at Choongo School. Next Tuesday(9th August) is the formal handover of the Ntambo hammer mill to the community. Jute has exercised one of her many skills and prepared the District Commissioner, taking the opportunity to emphasize maintenance, co-operation, sharing and sustainability. This will be a big day for the community and there will be great celebration. There are more photos in the gallery - please take a look.