Last Wednesday marked our end of the project party. We have been working desperately long hours for the last few weeks to complete our project on time. Some days it seemed that the world was against us with rain and more mud than I’ve ever imagined to hold us back from finishing. But we made it to the end and fortunately we only have some finishing touches to do this next week. But Wednesday we partied. We celebrated the completion of 45 new hand dug wells, 22 rehabilitated wells, and 33 rain water harvesting tanks installed. That’s no small feat! There were several hiccups in this project along the way but the outcome is something to be very proud of. And without the national staff here in Gokwe it would have never been completed. I am extremely thankful for their hard work and dedication to completing this project.
We came together as a team for an afternoon of celebration. I was the decorating committee, therefore our party had paper chains. I am famous for making paper chain for long periods of waiting to mark of the days but I thought hey what the heck we can decorate with them too!
The local grocery store called Spar has a pretty decent bakery. The weird thing was it was a chocolate cake but every so often you found a raisin… like a special surprise or someone knocked over the leftover raisins in the cake. I’ll never know.
We had one very friendly game of tug of war and then we got serious. I think we played tug of war for all most an hour and let me tell you there was some fierce completion.
Overall it was a really great time to spend with our staff and really let them know how much we appreciated them and the work they have been doing on this project for the last year.
We had quite the spread of food… we would call it a BBQ but here they call it a Braai. (sounds like bry) It was a beautiful afternoon with really great people. There was even a little dancing at the end of the evening. Its a good thing that it was getting dark and pictures were not able to be taken. 
I’m going to miss seeing these faces everyday. We are still waiting to find out if the funding on the next project has been approved, but honestly I’m enjoying my time in Gokwe and finishing up the project here still keeps me busy. I have been extremely blessed and impacted by the work that was done here in Gokwe and am so very happy to have a small part in it.
