DAY #4

Today is the first day we start building. We're all up bright and early after our first night sleeping under a mosquito net. Those suckers may look thin and flimsy but they keep the heat in. There was a major difference in temperature underneath the nets and outside of them...all that hot air, I guess. :)

We had a great breakfast provided to us by our one and only Fiesal (sp?). Yummy eggs, toast, cereal and interesting and SPICY concoctions. The surprise of the morning was the unexpected warm milk in the cereal. That was the last time I had cereal...I couldn't get past it. LOL!
After breakfast we all grabbed our gear and put on a sweatshirt and jacket...it was chilly...and crammed outselves into the kombi. Sechele, our kombi driver, was a really great guy! Very sweet and loved to tell us stories about his life and about Botswana. Duraid loved to tease him...like he did with all of us.

Poor Martina had no luggage because the airline lost it so she has been wearing the same clothes since day one. She is being a great sport about it though and we're waiting for her bags to show up any day now.


Our kombi


Bento, Darla, Martina, Martha, Diego, Claude and Mike

When we arrived at the first family's home we noticed that the house had already been started and the local workers had already started their morning work. As we all unloaded out of the kombi like circus clowns the little children sprinted over to their mom and hit underneath her skirt. The workers looked at us briefly but kept building and the women came over to shyly greet us. After a bunch of hugs hello we then made our way over to see what kind of house we were building. We hung out bags in the only large tree that was in the family's yard and set out to start working.

To our surprise it was extremely difficult to be able to do any work. The local men really didn't want anything to do with us, especially the women. The men from our group had a hard time as well. As soon as one of them would pick up a tool a local man would figure out a way to take it back. And since there was a lack of tools and the mode of communication was gestures I guess the men figured they knew exactly what they were doing and we were only going to get in the way. So for most of the day the women didn't actually build. Carolyn and Martha volunteered or were volunteered to help the local women prepare lunch which turned out to be an all morning task. The rest of the girls quickly became entertainment to the children who were slowly coming out of their shells with much coaxing from us.





One little girl named Tana was the star of the kids. She is a little actress and is very outgoing and dramatic. She is so cute...they all are! They were so in awe of my long soft hair. When I would sit down they would run right up and take my ponytail and rub it on their face over and over. After a while one of the neighborhood girls decided she wanted to braid my hair. She started doing really little braids by the top of my head that just stuck straight out. Then she decided that thicker looser braids would be just fine. To her joy I left my new African hairdo in the rest of the day. I had to take a picture of the outcome after we got back to our hotel.


Tana, the girl who braided my hair, Thabiso, Eva and two other neighborhood kids


Tana, Eva, Thabiso and boy from the neighborhood


My authentic braids...haha!

I was the first brave soul to try the bathroom/outhouse. Everyone was waiting for someone to try it to give a review of the experience so I decided to be that person. It actually was pretty clean, didn't smell and they even got a bit of toilet paper for us to use. Normally the family uses old trash (the paper from the cement bags was the toilet paper of choice when the regular toilet paper was gone) from the trash pit and not toilet paper, there's just not enough money for toilet paper. One of the kid's chores is to clean the bathroom. They walk in and out of there with bare feet.


The bathroom and the trash pit

A bunch of us decided to trek over to the second house site. We had to be lead there by one of the local men because there were no streets, street signs, addresses or anything like we normally have. We walked through a maze of little pathways in between the barbed wire of people's property. Since the land is so flat and really indistinguishable we felt like we were just walking and walking to nowhere. Finally we came around a corner and arrived at the site.

A woman named Mary is the owner of this house. She is a widower who takes in kids from time to time. He home hadn't been started yet. Three local men were in the process of making cement bricks and placing them in the sun to dry. Unlike the men at the first house, Mary did not have one bit of a problem putting the girls to work right away. Our first job was to move the drying bricks into the sunlight. We then started to do some cement mixing. After a few trial and errors we finally figured out after much explaination (via gesturing) from Mary that the wheelbarrel had to be "just right" in order to pass the "Mary test". Mary's wheelbarrel had to be full and flush to the top edges of the barrel and then slightly rounded in the middle. Pretty soon Mary was very happy with our work and gave us the thumbs up when we were doing well.

After lunch (I will save lunch explainations for another day) we went back to Mary's but some of our guys wanted to come and help. We tried to warn them about the tight ship that Mary commanded. We even gave them detailed instructions but they just did their own thing. Mary caught them and scolded them every time they tried to slack even one bit. She would even take the full wheelbarrel from them and dump out the sand they just shoveled in and made them do it over. Us girls just laughed. :)

Soon the men were told to spread the cement to make the floor. In order to do this they had to put the wet cement in a wheelbarrel and then roll it up a really thin 2x4 piece of wood. Well, it wasn't as easy as they thought it would be. Duraid ended up slashing his shin open with a piece of metal he was trying to use to create the beginning of the ramp. Then later on both Duraid and Diego almost lost their manhood when at the end of the ramp the 2x4 flipped up like a see-saw right between their legs! SO FUNNY!!! Both of them gasped at how close they had come to almost certain devistation.

A bunch of us ventured into the town to the "internet cafe". It really was a store with two ancient and slow computers in the back room. We had to pay in 15 minute increments so of course the slow computers were profitable for the business owner but frustrating for us. :) We figured out that one computer was a bit faster than the other, so we all kept a mental note of that fact. It was fun sending email back home trying to explain this other world to everyone. Martha wrote a novel to send to her family and when she went to send it the email program timed out and lost her email. She was so upset. From that point on we had to copy our emails before sending them just in case that happens again. Poor Patricia got her credit cards stolen in Johannesburg so she has been trying to email the credit card companies to cancel her card. Talk about stress.

When we got back to the lodge we all immediately jumped in the shower. It was the BEST shower I have taken in my entire life. I can't even explain it. Afterwards we all ate like pigs at dinnertime and relaxed outside by our hotel doors chatting about our day and getting to know each other more. Duraid supplied us with wine and cheese which we cherished. I love my habitat team, everyone is so nice and we all get along so great!


Bento, Chris, Mike, Richard and Martha


African wine - yummy!