our land in Mali

Just over 2 years ago we bought a piece of land in Mali.  We were given a special gift of money to be able to buy 2 lots on the edge of town, maybe 3 miles from where we live now.  One lot is considered sufficient for a house, but it seems to me that if you build a house on 1 lot there's hardly any yard left after.  Our 2 lot piece of land measures 20 by 30 meters, which is about 66 by 98 feet.
In the first picture you can see JP standing on our land, this was just after the purchase was final.  As this is the edge of town, you can see that there are a few small mud-brick houses in the picture, but mostly it is open fields. The big tree was on our land, but we had to cut it down.

 The second picture was taken about 6 months later.  The first picture was during the rainy season, so it was green.  The second picture shows the brown desert look we have here the rest of the year.  You can see that the big dangerous tree that was cut down.

 The last 2 pictures are from this week.  There have been some big changes, and there are more to come!  There are 2 neighbors that have built houses that border on our property.  The whole neighborhood has a lot of new construction happening.  We have been gifted more money for this project, and we've been able to have a well dug (you can see a man using the well in the bottom photo, he is standing on it and that black thing is to pull up water) and we are in the process of getting an enclosure wall built around the property.  It is normal and necessary here to have each property walled-in.

 Below you can see 2 men in the trench that was dug for the foundation bricks of the front wall of the property.  One day there will be a gate right where that guy is bending down.

Work is really progressing!  We are going over there almost every day to check up on things, so I'll post more photos soon.
We would love to build a house on this property, and if fact we already have an official approved blueprints plan for a house.  Before we could start building the wall we had to turn in all our plans for the property to be approved by city hall.  It was fun to design the house and map out the property.  I minored in Art in college, and I saw those design classes I had to take coming in handy.  I was drawing and erasing and drawing on graph paper for a few weeks! There aren't mortgages here like in the states, so it is just a matter of if we can find a personal loan or more gifts of money to allow us to go forward with building on our land.  We are so thankful for what is already happening!