A few of us had a great idea last night to awake this morning at 5:30am to have an early morning jog before starting our day on the job site. However, we forgot the elevation the sanctuary sits on so uphill portions of the jog was challenging. Just what our legs needed! LOL
Many of us woke to feeling a little more rested with getting our first solid 5-6 hours of sleep in. We must be getting used to all of nature's wonderful noises we hear each night!
Another warm day again with temperature in the shade at 35 and with the humidity we were over 40 again. A few clouds this morning and a slight breeze at times was gladly welcomed.
We knew today was going to be a very tough and heavy lift day. Main focuses today were: mixing and filling the bond beam, finishing the sewage tank, more concrete block making, board planing and beginning to build the roof trusses.
Team Out House rocked and finished the job. We finally got Harley out of the hole he was in the past three days. 120 concrete blocks to build the structure.
Team Concrete Block (today it was Karen and Sandy) and they out performed the 4 man crew from yesterday by producing over 60 blocks in a couple hour time span. Way to show up the boys!!!
Team Bond Beam completed the four batches of back breaking concrete mixing and got the entire beams filled. Now they have to sit for 2-3 days before we can start adding the trusses. Once finished they moved onto cleaning up the side of the house and began making a first roof truss template. The wood looked like a local fir but is extremely heavy. We believe it could be a teak. Will probably take a team of 7-8 people to lift these trusses in place.
The children met us again with smiling faces and open arms. Many giving us hugs to say good morning. A colleague of mine had a quote on the bottom of a recent e-mail that read “The empty spaces between your fingers were created so that another's could fill them in.” Wow what a meaning that has to us now!!!
Lan spends a lot of quality time with the children in the morning. Teaching them as well as herself the numbers from 1 to 10. They were also lining up to get their pictures taken one by one. After each picture they had to see themselves on the camera. It brought so many smiles to their little precious faces. The children are very respectful and for the most part well behaved. What's very strange to us is we never see a mother coming to check on her child(ren) the entire day. It's like the children run free the entire day and look out for themselves. Preschool option is available to them but they must pay for it which is why we understand the amount of little feet running in the village each day.
Today was also baby weighing day at the medical clinic right across from the house. So it was busy with the mom's lining up outside and many breast feeding on the step while they wait. One particular baby stood out as you see by the pictures above. This is an Albino baby. So cute but our hearts went out to this baby as it will be so hard for the child to live in this culture and climate. It is also very dangerous for them as the "Witch doctors" in Tanzania kill them and sell their body parts as they are to be very lucky. So sad!!!
Each night we eat dinner outside by candle light and the brightness the moon provides. The stars seem so much more prominent here. The sky in the evening is an amazing sight even though the moon is upside down! Last night Richard brought out the telescope and we were able to get a good look at the moon and we really could see this large crater on the top of it. Truly awesome!
Tonight was a quiet night by all. Thanks to the heat, sunshine, heaving lifting and sore bodies we are exhausted!
Looking forward to tomorrow...
Marianne
DWC Participant
Tanzania 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment