In a marquee filled with Irish people wearing t-shirts of 30 different colours we watched children from Khayelitsha sing “Thank you Irish for building homes” and stood to honour one of the world’s greatest citizens, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Drinking bottles and bottles of water, we withstood the heat of a marquee under clear blue African sky as this great veteran of human rights made us all honorary South African citizens for our building blitz – and as he said himself, he is an archbishop, so he doesn’t lie!

Work began on many of the housesm and the gardeners got stuck in to laying the foundations for a playground and a vegetable garden as today’s 1,200 new arrivals were checked in and debriefed before joining the workforce on site tomorrow morning at 7.30.

The Arches was a site of many hugs and happy reunions, as more and more flights arrived and volunteers exchanged stories and downed the first beer of the evening. Lots of well-intentioned volunteers with t-shirts fresh from their plastic wrappings nodded and said they were going to take it easy on the beer to be ready for the morning, before beating it up to the bararmed with tokens to buy beers by the bucketful – literally! Sure what can you do when the beer is cheap and you meet up with old friends – 6,000 miles from home!