There is still a lot of construction going on at this camp. Many of the houses are still being built. There is one small house that was big enough to accommodate the five guys, but the girls had to use one of the unfinished houses. Our house has three rooms, and a bathroom with one working toilet and two cold showers. It was still messy from the construction, but at least the tile floors were finished. Some of us slept in the foyer the first night because one of the rooms had been used for storage. We all lined our sleeping pads and bags up on the floor in rows with just enough room to walk in and out.
It is much colder here than it was in Swaziland. We were not quite prepared for it. There has been frost on the ground in the mornings, but it warms up pretty quickly when the sun comes up. The days have been very comfortable for T-shirts and jeans, but when the sun goes down at 6pm, it cools off again.
The camps do not start until Monday, so we spent Thursday doing some construction and clean up projects around the property. Some of the girls cleaned out the girls house, and cleared out the extra room. The bathrooms were cleaned up nicely, and the floors mopped. It was nice to have our space feel a little more inviting.
The front porch area of our house is not yet finished. The retaining wall is in place, and the filler rocks and refuse were there, but it had not been covered yet. The rough rocks and broken glass and other refuse made it a little dangerous to walk across. Some members of our team spent the day hauling sand in to cover the filler on our half of the patio area. Later, it will be covered with concrete to finish it off. At least for now we have a more even surface to walk across.
Another group spent the day moving stuff out on one of the houses into a storage area. There were a lot of boxes and things stacked in the room that needed to be cleared out to make room for a team coming later. The boys will also be moving out of their house and into the other half of our building once the tile floors are finished in that half. That will leave the other houses open for the team coming in next week.
The group that I was working with had a slightly more adventurous task. We were handed machetes and hand saws and sent down to the river to cut reads. We had to venture deep into the bamboo in search of thick and straight stalks. Then with machete in hand, we chopped down the selected canes and hauled them back out to be trimmed to the correct size. Two of us cut the canes, two hauled them out, and two sawed them down to size. It was quite fun actually, and educational. The reads will be used to build a fence around the goats. I am hoping we will learn how to do that part as well. It could be a valuable skill to have.
It felt good to do some manual labor, and helped release some of the stress that has been building for the last few weeks. We all appreciated our dinner that night, and looked forward to a good nights sleep. I am looking forward to getting back out there to do some more when we have some down time.
Today has been a little more relaxed. We are supposed to do some training today to prepare for camp to start on Monday. Steve, our contact, is running a little late so we have an extra hour of free time this morning. We will begin our training around 11am and go until we are finished. Then we will have tonight and Saturday as free time. We may have a chance to run into town tomorrow. I am hoping to buy some warmer clothes.
I don’t know what to expect for the camp next week. All I know now is that they usually have up to 150 kids that the bring in form the surrounding squatter camps. I have no idea what their idea of camp is, but it is sure to be fun. I look forward to seeing it all unfold.
