Sequels rarely live up to their predecessor but not in the case.
The day began wonderfully with our first glimpse of sunshine since arriving in Africa, and continued to warm us throughout the day. Everyone know the task ahead, but no-one quite knew how much progress could be made in the relatively few hours of daylight available. Nevertheless the boys split up into their teams and got to work immediately. There is so much to do at the moment that every boy had a specific job to do and worked hard at it all day. For most this meant mixing concrete for 6 hours. At about 11am another 7 tonnes of gravel arrived, but not on a lorry that could tip it out, so one group had to spend about an hour shovelling it all off. While this was going on another group left on another lorry to collect a few tonnes of sand; it had to be shovelled on and shovelled off again. Fortunately in both these, and every other task, help was on hand from the vast number of local people who are helping; some of these are paid labourers, but most are children who live nearby and no doubt go to the school. You may see from the pictures that in addition to this there is an audience of a few dozen children who have watched us throughout the project thus far.
By the time the boys broke for lunch they had completed 6 of the 13 concrete slabs that were required and planned to do two more upon their return.
You may remember that I spoke ill of the lunch yesterday; I’m pleased to report that we were given crisps today – thank you chef!
After lunch it was all hands to the pumps again and the final two slabs were poured in record time; about twice as fast as the day before. Tomorrow we have the simpler task of filling in all the alternate slabs to complete it; meanwhile the end walls will start to take shape.
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