BUILDER RECALLS AFRICAN ROOTS : CONSTRUCTION INSPECTOR LEARNED TRADE IN ZIMBABWE.Byline: Victoria Giraud People and Places Tim Holt, Division of State Architects building inspector The following articles relate to the topic of building inspector:
Those experiences have served Tim well ever since, most recently when the Las Virgenes Unified School District Las Virgenes Unified School District (LVUSD) is a K-12 school district in north-west Los Angeles County, USA consisting of 14 public schools in the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Westlake Village, and several small portions of the West Hills section of Los Angeles. Board recently commended his accomplishment of the near-impossible with a plaque. In less than three months, between November and January, Tim directed and coordinated the efforts of placing 30 portable buildings, containing 36 classrooms, on eight different campuses in the school district. It was part of the state-mandated class-size reduction plan for grades one through three. Helping him were organizational skills honed in Zimbabwe. The work meant ``taking charge from Day One through the final approvals,'' Tim said. ``The tricky part was the rainy season,'' he chuckled. ``We were caught with open trenches, sloshing around in the mud.'' His speedy efforts (perhaps a throwback throwback see atavism. to his position with the Swift Transport Co. in Zimbabwe) were noticed by all the classes benefiting from the changes. ``Every class sent me stuff. It's nice to be appreciated,'' Holt said. Holt was born in Orlando, Fla. In 1967, when he was 8, his parents, as missionaries for the Church of Christ, took the family to Bulawayo, Rhodesia (since renamed Zimbabwe), where they have remained ever since. Except for his last year of high school in Lincoln, Ill., Tim received most of his education in Zimbabwe. ``It was exciting,'' Tim observed. ``You don't appreciate where you grow up until you leave it. It was an incredible place.'' Although the country was a multicultural mix of the African Matabeles and Shonas tribes, Indians, Asians, British and Dutch with a ratio of 18 blacks to every white, it was a place of friendly relations. The country has a climate much like Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , and Tim sees a similarity in the landscape with Agoura Hills. The veld veld or veldt (both: vĕlt, Du. fĕlt) [Du.,=field], term applied to the grassy undulating plateaus of the Republic of South Africa and of Zimbabwe. (grassland) was full of elephants, lions, cape buffaloes, antelopes and zebras, and Tim enjoyed taking photographs of them at the game park. The animals weren't to be taken for granted Adj. 1. taken for granted - evident without proof or argument; "an axiomatic truth"; "we hold these truths to be self-evident" axiomatic, self-evident obvious - easily perceived by the senses or grasped by the mind; "obvious errors" . Elephants on their own might be rogue elephants and were known to charge cars, which nearly happened on one of Tim's trips to the game park. He had a close call one day as he was fishing on the Zambezi River Zambezi River River, south-central Africa. It rises in northwestern Zambia, flows south across eastern Angola and western Zambia to the border of Botswana, then turns east and forms the Zambia-Zimbabwe border. . He saw a hippo come up for air, scarcely three feet from his pontoon pontoon, one of a number of floats used chiefly to support a bridge, to raise a sunken ship, or to float a hydroplane or a floating dock. Pontoons have been built of wood, of hides stretched over wicker frames, of copper or tin sheet metal sheathed over wooden boat. ``He got as big a fright as we did. Everybody screamed, and he disappeared,'' he remembered. In the 1980s when Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia: see Zimbabwe. became Zimbabwe, Tim felt it ``was a lost history rather than making history. The country was no more. The economy declined, and it hasn't recovered.'' Helping his father build churches (now 33 throughout Zimbabwe) got Tim interested in construction. He apprenticed with a local builder and, after graduating from the Bulawayo Technical College, worked for the largest construction firm in the country. Tim explained that most buildings are built with brick and concrete because of the plethora of termites. When Tim married Lynne, who was native to Zimbabwe, they decided to move to the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. in 1986 to further his career. ``I was the rebel of the family.'' His brother and sister remain involved with the church and stayed in Africa with their parents. The Holts considered moving to Illinois or Florida, but the cold of one and the humidity of the other were discouraging. The problem was solved when ``friends opened their home in Newbury Park. We settled in very quickly,'' Tim recalled. They've lived in the area ever since but try to go back to Africa every four or five years. Like tourists, they visit the places they'd never bothered to see when they lived there. Daughter Shelynne, now 7, vividly remembers her Zimbabwe visit when she was only 2 years old. Taylor, who is 5, has yet to see his father's second home but might get his chance at the end of the year. Tim hasn't ruled out the possibility of eventually moving back, since most of their relatives are there, but he is satisfied with his professional career. |
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