Losing Perspective

Pushing an un-pushable process

I’m sitting on a plane in the skies over Africa trying to put everything we’re doing into perspective.

It’s silly o’clock in the morning here, but recently we’ve been no strangers to sleepless nights, recurring dreams about buried pipes bursting and cold sweats over finances and licencing.

Big things are happening in the valley, but they’ve been wearing us down.

I lost perspective last week on one of the most difficult days on this crazy journey so far.

I can see clearly now, the plane has gone: flying out of Lisbon to Nairobi

Another no-show from our architect and another week-long delay was the final shove towards the realisation we weren’t going to be fully open this year.

There have been many challenges, pressured decisions and self-reflections on whether we would ever have started this madcap scheme if we knew how it would unfold.

Now there are even deeper doubts about what we can do before the debts are called in and expenditure starts to spiral above the lower autumn and winter income.

But landing on a sunny June evening in Amsterdam after a short hop from Lisbon, traversing the chaotic airport terminals and now sitting here in the dark, wedged between the two other biggest blokes on a flight to Nairobi, I hope some of that perspective is returning.

At the very least it’s giving me some quiet reflective time to think about what we’ve done, how far we’ve come and what we’ve still got left to do.

Taking shape: the latest aerial view of our project…the insides now need attention

The workload has been relentless – my precious early morning thinking hours to get podcast episodes published and blogs written have been cut short before 8am when workers and machines arrive and the firefighting begins.

The days are long and we have been using the light and the time; bedtimes are early, but bodies are sore and minds are busy.

Planning...we try...there are pages of re-written and slightly updated to-do lists in notebooks, but something always comes along like a water leak or an unexpected artisan to throw a spanner in the works.

Extra screws for the patio covers, materials to order, emergency trips for vital components...more things to do than we have time for in a day or even to get through in a week.

Water challenge: now I’ve just got to learn how it all works

I’m good at the firefighting, but not so good at the big picture; I push things through by force of will, but don’t properly prioritise; I immerse myself in the technical details, but am overwhelmed when faced with an onslaught of competing demands.

Thank goodness Ana is better at that...if only she could have more space to do it.

Ana deals with all the angry conversations in Portuguese and the old-school mansplainers, and has to manage the pressure of me pushing demands to the brink of destruction.

It really is one of the most difficult and stressful things we have ever done, but the hardest part is all the things that are out of our control.

No mugs: but thanks for the nudge Daniel…our neighbour’s latest gift

And the process of licensing – the town hall bureaucracy – is certainly out of our control.

Our architect has been absent for long periods and different people are telling us many different things about how a changing process works – what we need and what we don’t need.

Expensive acoustic inspections, energy certificates that could take a year, six months or just a couple of weeks...depending on who you ask.

We pushed hard for our final architecture project to be submitted, but it wasn’t accurately done. Now it needs to be withdrawn and then re-submitted.

The topographic survey was done quickly to keep us ahead, but now we’re told our recent spurt of landscaping also needs to be marked on the map and the survey needs to be redone

Spreading the love: mounds of bark ready to be spread on the land and in the heart-shaped area on the left

We’ve done some extreme gardening before, but the last couple of weeks has been all about landscaping – cleaning up after the builders, levelling the land and putting in a few degrees of slope here and there so rainwater flows between the houses and down into the valley.

We know water lingers in the clay at the top of our valley, and as soon as the soil is saturated, any little indentation can become a lake.

Hopefully it will be managed by the long drainage trench cut between the future vineyard and the houses, and the new roadside ditch filled with drain pipes and gravel.

Ditching it: we layered gravel on top of a French drain to hopefully channel the water from the road down into the lake

We bought many cubic metres of material – carefully calculating the cost of different colours and qualities to try and stay within our trimmed budget.

With the builders’ cabins gone the area in need of prettification required before welcoming guests, was a lot larger than we expected: hundreds of square metres.

Talking it through: digger magician Helder explains what he would do

Thankfully we had Helder from the material supplies and plant hire place up the road – he smooths and levels piles of gravel using the tractor buckets like extensions of his own hands, flicking here, patting down earth there.

The list of things left to do is overwhelming, but with Alan & Margery Gledson staying again we got the final building’s concrete floors sealed and all the wooden bathroom sink tops and bowls installed.

Happy Anniversary: Alan & Marge not only helped us every day, they even invited us along to their wedding anniversary dinner at the Crab-straunt

The marble kitchen tops arrived – they’re beautiful – and slowly but surely the electrics, the metal safety railings and the water system are being completed.

The beds will be the last things to go in...once the workman boots have moved on.

Sinking feelings: but we managed to get all the bathroom wood and pottery installed

Even a beautiful Portuguese paradise can become a millstone of pressure and worry.

But retuning to Africa, meeting some Ethiopian journalists who live their lives in fear of the police knocking on their door in the night, helps bring some perspective.

I’ve been doing some work on the side countering disinformation and that’s what brings me to Nairobi – our old home – for the first time in five years.

Old favourite: the ginger prawns at the Open House restaurant in Nairobi are legendary.

A vast concrete overpass – the lauded Expressway – now flies above the city.

It took just a few years to build...a little more than our lodge which pales in scale.

High-rise buildings have sprung up, development is everywhere...but so is protest – five years on, different voices are now being silenced by the same water cannon, riot police and teargas that were so familiar I owned a gas mask.

These are the voices of the youth facing down a tumult of new taxes.

Tear gas on the streets of Nairobi: a couple of days after I left protestors were killed

Maybe it’s time for me to mix the morning classical music listening with a little more news again, to read those Economists, to re-engage in that big world beyond the valley.

There are books waiting to be read, there are beaches ready to be visited, there’s calm to be restored and chaos to be tamed.

Balance needs to come back into our lives – we need to be running this, and not letting it run (or ruin) us.

It’s time for a reset, a plan, a strategy...to be ready for guests as soon as we can and to get ourselves rested and ready for them

After all, this is just the beginning of something that will never be finished, but will just get better and better.

Spread the word, help us get this soft-opening year off to a good start.