Workin' Hard

May 29, 2013

Bright and early again for more painting. We were ready for breakfast at 7:30 this morning. Breakfast was typically bread, beans, eggs and fruit. This morning, there was a new option for us. This time we had a fermented corn porridge that you can add sugar cubes to so it can sweeten up some. It wasn’t my favorite thing we have had this trip, but I did eat it all, knowing we would be working hard again this morning.

We got to the site and first finished the second coat on one of the classrooms. after that was done, we headed to the walkway on the south end of the building. Just over half of the columns and overhangs were still bare concrete, so it was back with the shovels, scraping the columns and overhangs to get them ready. We also used the brooms they have here to get the cobwebs (not spiderwebs) down. We then started going to work again, I spent most of my time up on a table getting the high to reach areas with the brush. The table was a novelty the first day or so, but at this point, I was wishing I had a ladder instead. Soon enough, it was 12:30 and we were off to lunch.

We headed to the restaurant across the street from the hotel, a nice open air place called Hut D’Eric, where we had lots of seafood and a fermented corn “dough” that got dipped in tomato sauce, or in my case, the shito. Everything was fantastic again, even the fried shrimp, that you just eat, shell and all. After getting stuffed, we headed over to the Kente cloth shop near our hotel. I bought one each for the boys. I had originally gotten a colorful one for Will and black and white one for Henry, then quickly changed my mind as I didn’t need Henry complaining at some future date that he got the boring one.

After that, it was back to paint two more classrooms and some of the columns outside on the north end. We finished that in about 3 hours, so we got to spend some time playing with the kids. While most of the group was playing with the kids in a big circle, I found a group of boys playing with a soccer ball up on the other building. We were kicking it back and forth, when I took a break after slightly injuring myself. I saw a young boy, probably 2 1/2-3 with his older brother, about 8 or 9 years old. His older brother was supposed to be learning how to cut grass with the machete, so he had to leave his brother for a bit.