Science Lab - nearly finished
Things have been developing indeed for our physics and science lab. We have had more hiccups when it comes to our double story building though, as administration services in Blantyre do not make things easy for us. They have of course approved our architect and construction plans as you know and construction has started. But the engineers' visits to the site have been delayed and it has slowed us down again. The city's engineers must come and check foundation work of all double story building, and then make their report, which once approved by the city, gives us the green light for the construction of the pillars (with steel), a key step for the building. The city double checks and triple checks projects like ours suffered a great delayed as we have had a tragedy last May in Blantyre, when an old double story restaurant collapsed killing 7 people. Since then all permits are being reviewed and they are very strict. It's a good thing, but it slows down the process once again. Jacaranda being a school, there are also certain areas where we have to be very specific for safety reasons.
So we have decided to do things differently for the physics and science lab. We will continue with our double story, at the pace that we can, depending on the speed of official approvals.
We are now building the physics and science lab in a different area of the Jacaranda compound, as a one story building. It is much simpler indeed, and progress is much faster. Our completion target is 4th of January, 2012, start of the second term after the Christmas holidays. The foreman and his team have been busy and are currently working. A few more weeks and we will be done, and our students will be able to use the labs!
The funds being used for this construction are funds raised by you (Fundacion Roviralta) and Shanghai American School excluding those raised for the library that was to be included in the double story.
Since we have a small makeshift library, we feel the labs are urgently needed and that's why we have taken this decision.
We could have taken this decision in the beginning, but it seemed more economical building a double story and more over the space we would have saved on our school grounds.
When we are able to continue with our double story building we will use the space that would have been the labs as a computer science and IT centre. The top level will still hold our new main library.
We will send pictures and video soon, as we are nearing completion.
This will all be mentioned on our website and press in Malawi as we will be the first school in our community (ten villages) to have a proper physics and science lab.
We hope you can visit Jacaranda someday soon.
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