Roughcasting and painting

Sometime in July
I'm not sure when my house in Léconi was built but it's been a while and the exterior walls have never been roughcast and the window frames, shutters, doors and their frames never painted or treated. I had decided some time back these were priority jobs for the dry season and when the south wall started to turn into one huge damp patch in the last rains of May it became even more important. I bought cement in Franceville and never imagined that getting sand could be a problem in Léconi, after it's built on sand, the Plateaux are almost nothing but sand! However, the local authorities in their wisdom have now decided that you need a permit (to be bought of course) to dig up sand anywhere but on private property. In Léconi this is also like asking people to pay for the air they breathe! As a result few of the truck drivers are interested in hauling it now. I handed the task of finding and bringing the sand to the mason who was rough casting the walls but it really was quite a saga. He eventually found someone willing to let him dig sand from his property (for a price) and a driver to bring it. The sand was duly delivered and the walls roughcast so now I could set about painting all that woodwork. Except, of course, careful, precision work is not a high value here so I first had to spend many hours scraping and washing the excess cement from the window grills, shutters, window frames...... Given the delay caused by the sand saga I was beginning to run out of time before leaving for Cameroon, especially as I was desperately trying to get as many Latege texts transcribed and analysed with Therese as I could too. In the end I managed to get the first coat of paint onto five set of window shutters and their frames and both the kitchen and main doors. The other three windows will have to wait another opportunity, but at least they are on the leeward side.