Wednesday 8th July
Today our team was split for the first time: half of us started work at a community site and the other half kept the work going at the school. Myself and Rachel took today's thought for the day. I thought the holes in the ground that Katie described in yesterday's blog were the worst toilets I had ever seen, but the teams expectations were about to hit new lows. The whole team went to visit the new building site in the community where we were warmly welcomed in by the 20 families that live there.
5 minutes into the visit we were stunned after being shown the toilet that most of the community had to use and in essence was similar to a pig sty, that was overflowing with human waste. This awful hut is still being used by the community while we build our block, and the only control they had over the volume of waste was introducing chemicals into the mixture which evidently wasn't working very well.
This was a huge wake up call and I was shocked that the people in the community had to use this as sanitation. As my half of the team transferred from the community back to the school that morning we were all visibly appalled by what we saw, we could only imagine the struggles of using this everyday and how many homes in Ethiopia have the same problem. We reflected on this as a team on the short bus ride across town, and a couple of us were tearing up. It was safe to say everyone was incredibly determined to make a difference on both sites today.
Coffee Ceremony at Community site Today our work at the school consisted of mixing cement and bricklaying. The weather was much better than Tuesday's downpours and we were able to make a great impact in the morning session, stacking the bricks high for the toilet blocks. This was made possible by the great help from the builders and also Sami and Dexter, our two designated policemen. We're really starting to bond with them despite the language barrier and they have taught us a few Amharic phrases.
But the best efforts of the day came from the community team; they had managed, alongside the locals, to mix, set and mould all the reinforced concrete required for the base of the block in just 3 hours and had finished their work by midday. Considering how long the concrete took to finish on Tuesday with the compliment of the full team, this was a herculean sized effort. Nathan and Peter later told everyone at lunch that the locals on the community site must have been 'half horse' which might help to explain their super strength but there was a lot for our team to be proud of today.
Entertainment was a very controversial quiz hosted by Neil and Peter. The questions were very tough seeing as Neil enjoyed film directors from the 1910s and mountains on other planets, while Peter wanted to show off his knack for (in my opinion) irrelevant biological phenomena, such as dinosaurs eating boulders to aid digestion and the giant golden crested flying fox being the largest flying mammal. I still found it very interesting, but Rachel and I didn't have the same eye for detail and came last. The winners were Ben and Alex on 13 out of a possible 36, just to demonstrate how hard the quiz was.
Post by Harry Adair
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