Building a South African Playground

Last summer('06) I was part of a team that worked in a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. We accomplished what we thought was going to be impossible. We built a playground for the local, township pre-school. The plan was to build a balance beam, a monkey bar set, and a swing set. We also built a fence to go around the playground area. I came across some short clips that may give you an idea of the work we did.

After we had just cleared the ground of trash, rocks and other unnecessary things, we measured out the playground area. After we had done that, we started digging holes for the posts. Once the holes were dug, we began getting the supplies together to make the playground pieces.

This clip is an example of how we had to drill ever hole to attach our pipes and other pieces of wood together.

In this clip we are trying to get the metal poles to stay in the holes we have drilled for the monkey bars. It's not as easy as 1,2,3.

The next clip is after we got the monkey bars up. I am sawing off the metal pieces to make it safe for the kids. Rachael is taking a piece of lumbar to get drilled.

We had to mix our own concrete to fill the holes. The clip below shows a few township boys who showed up to help us work. This is a great thing! Typically the teenage township boys are into so much trouble or are very lazy. These two boys decided to help us and it made a big difference in the community, as they acted as examples to the other kids.

Our completed swing looked like this-(we actually used tires for the seats):
Here are the famous monkey bars:

We also built the balance beam and the fence, put a brick walk way in, and built a roof on a store.
The time that wasn't used for labor was used for love. We ran kid's camps and loved on the kids in two different townships.