The driver failed to show today so we could not go back to the deaf church to finish the work there. Instead we shifted our attention to building a schoolroom for handicapped children. The process is essentially the same as we had been using with a few significant modifications. The sand for the concrete was not delivered, instead we shoveled it into 5 gallon buckets in a river bed and formed our bucket brigade up a ravine to the school house location. An exhausting task to say the least. Next the buckets had to be filled with water and carried up the hill to the building site. The final ingredients are Portland cement and blocks (of a slightly less crappy composition than the ones used the other day. These ingredients are delivered (hooray), but the crew refused to unload the truck (boo). We had to form our brigade line again and pass along 600 55-pound blocks (two trucks worth). This may not sound like a task invented by the devil himself, but it is. Doing 600 reps with 55 pounds is brutal; I don't care who you are. For icing on the cake, there were ten 110-pound bags of cement.
Once we recovered from hauling sand, bricks, and water we set about building walls. As we start working a few things become obvious. We are becoming a team and learning how to work together. We can give instructions without insulting and receive them without being offended. We are also getting better at the work itself. The fundi correct less and our walls are straighter (that is when Betsy is not busy pushing the walls over). We made a fair amount of progress getting four courses of blocks on the foundation, which put us up about 4 feet.
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