Team Three - Day Three

Day three for Team Three. There must be something special about that. It was another good day; good progress, no injuries and no illness. We have all adjusted to the squat outhouse at the construction site, although not everyone is using the supply of old cement sacks left for toilet paper. We continue to focus on brick laying. The outside walls of the second dorm are within a day of completion and the ring beam on the first building is more than half way poured. There are some challenges since this is construction in Africa. We don't have a ladder and all the scaffolding is improvised. We had a pile of 20 foot Eucalyptus trees delivered today. Tomorrow they will become scaffolding for the high brick work. When the new supply of brick arrived last night we discovered that they were a half inch higher than the original supply. We improvised so we could complete the walls we had started by reducing the number of courses on each wall to allow us to arrive at our finished window height. Problem solved, until we had used half of that supply and the next truck arrived. These were just like the originals, warped, out of square and somewhat random in size. But the project is looking great. You can walk around in the first dorm and it feels like a home already. I walked through it with Ruth Shikuku, mother to the 36 children, today. It was the first time she had been in it. I asked her what she thought. She responded, "I think that it is a dream come true." It is for all of us here as well, and I am sure it is for many of you reading this. Bill