29 May 2014
After a sausage sandwich, which believe me is a luxury here, we headed off to St.Trizah’s School to see the boys and girls, unfortunately most of them were already in classes as we arrived. However, I saw a little hand through a hole in the metal framed wall to a classroom and a little voice shouting “Luke, Luke, Luke”. It was my little ‘best friend’ James. I told him that I will see him later and get back to work…LOL.
We attended a meeting in the staff room to talk… about the activities for the day. I decided to join our ‘Ground Force’ team to the new site that will be St.Trizah. We were to build a new classroom.
People may not know that Kenyan people are very laid back, if they say that they will be at a venue at 10am, expect it to be an hour later. We waited for a Kenyan woman for an hour, in the mean time, we entertained the local children of Nakura with balloons, made by my Dad, Steve. They were going crazy for them. The site of children running down the road full of colours in their hand was magical.
After arriving at the new site at 10.45, which is far later than we wanted to originally arrive, I was unofficially classed as ‘Head of Brick Development’. Bricks were simply made by wet mud, moulded into a brick style shape. They were then kept for 3 days to dry awaiting to be laid. My job was not only deciding which bricks were ready to be laid, but to reshape them after attracting loose soil from the floor.
I also collected water from the nearest water station, a mere mile and a half down the road. Luckily for me, we were taken by bus. I was able to only walk 200 yards to the classroom with a water bucket on my shoulder, severely wet though! The thought that women and children do this every day by foot is unbelievable. It hurt just walking the short distant that I did.
After placing three rows of bricks of the classroom, the time had come to lay down our toys for the day.