Hump Day on the Hill

The idea of "hump day" takes on a whole new meaning when you are hiking on Kilimanjaro several times a day and working as hard as we are during the times when we are not walking from place to place.  Today we broke into two groups again, with one planting trees and the other laying bricks.

We are happy to report that the tree planting plan was much more rational (and DOable) that yesterday's was.  Our planters walked another 30 minutes or so past the school and joined some school kids from another school at a field that was ready for planting.  All of the planters wore long pants and they needed them!  There are these long black thorns in some flowery underbrush that just imbed themselves in your clothes, socks, and hair without any hesitation.  If you walk through it with bare legs, they will drive themselves into your skin.

We had about 120 trees to plant and got through about half of them in half a day with the help of 15 or so kids. There was mild chaos at first, as the instructions were not clear, though we could certainly tell when we were doing things the wrong way.  We finally got our groove on and started sinking trees pretty quickly.  They were mostly hardwoods as far as we could tell, with almost no fruit trees, which we might have expected.  No matter what, we consider planting trees to be one of the most pure forms of community participation possible, so we are happy.

The other group returned to the school and got the walls moving toward the sky pretty quickly. We are all pretty good at all of the jobs there now, so we can just move from station to station without any new training.  We even got moving on mortaring our bricks faster than the master Ferdinand.  Of course, there were four or five of us on the wall at any given time, so that might explain this situation.

Olivia taught the English class by herself today, because Anthony was planting trees.  She did great, though teaching the concept of "along" is harder than you might think.

The construction group also got a tutorial on handsaws and hammering, with Megan as the star student, who picked up each of those skills in only two tries.  Our teacher was the roofer, Remy, who let us help assemble two more roof trusses.  We think there will be more to come, so we look forward to practicing our new skills in the afternoon.

We're lunching now and intend to get back to work as fast as we can.  More later.

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Big thunderclouds threatened us as we finished lunch, but we headed down to the worksite anyway.  We all made it there and started setting bricks when the rain began to fall.  We thought back to our first day setting up camp and how it poured constantly through our entire pack-in and move-in and realized that we had already endured something much crazier than whatever was about to happen.  (Some of us had to hike in barefoot!)  The rain was pretty brief and we did what the locals did: got under the trees in the courtyard of the school and prevented as much rain as possible from hitting us, though some unquestionably got through.  A few people put on raingear and kept working but they weren't alone for long. We finished the base of the center wall and kept going up on the outer walls.  We figured out where the windows and doors will go and just mortared as cleanly and quickly as we could.

We also had the particular thrill of literally raising the roof on the kitchen area.  We ended up getting four trusses up there using a method that we thought was a little odd and possibly more dangerous than necessary.  Happily, it all worked out.  And even more happily, now we are on the verge of having an enclosed room that will serve as the new kitchen for the school and for Mama Grace.

We invited Mama Grace in to survey the situation and she thought it was beautiful.  So beautiful that she feared it was "dangerous," in that it was too nice for her to use.  We assured her that she would be a good caretaker and she thanked each of us individually for our contributions to it.

We did, in fact, realize that there is a flaw in the plan, as the kitchen is equipped with what is essentially a big brick stove with four rings for cooking pots built in.  The fourth one is huge and deep, but is also pretty high -- too high for her to lift her huge cooking pot in and out.  We have asked the stove/chimney engineer to figure out a solution (a big step?) that will help her.

We look forward to posting pictures from today, as things look very different than the last time you saw the site.  We'll get there eventually . . .

 

The amount of sunset pictures posted can still never do a justice to how beautiful the sunsets are here.  They are definitely at the top of our lists of things we will miss when we leave. 

 The daily visits from the school children always keep us going at the work site.

 A shot of the banana trees behind our camp at golden hour.


 On our hike to the worksite today we got one of the clearest views of Mount Kilimanjaro today.

The progress of the inside of the kitchen from this morning.  When leaving the worksite today the tile was all laid and the chimney was being finished up outside the building.

 Some kids from the local school came to help the DIRTies plant some trees. A lot of us got black jacks stuck on our clothing

 Anthony getting a water break while planting trees

 The school children eating some very green guava.

 A small group went to a field and began planting trees.

Father Peter (a priest starting a new school for special needs children) is looking at our water filter and learning how to use it.

 Today, at the worksite, Remy started the roof for the kitchen.

 Megan and Aidan stayed busy helping Barnabas lay bricks.

 Aidan shows the beauty of the local butterflies.

 The stove for the kitchen is almost complete after the mason workers labored all day. The only thing left to do is finish the chimney.
 

 The three-part kitchen at the Omi primary school is gradually growing.

The site of Mount Kilimanjaro never stops amazing us!