Wednesday was a bit of a rough day... I awoke with a killer headache due to sleeping on a pillow that was too big. For the rest of the trip, I ended up using a sweatshirt as my pillow... talk about keeping it simple! :) Jennifer asked this morning if anyone would like to switch teams and work on the other house but everyone verbalized wanting to stick with their own team. I on the other hand, thought it would be good to mix up the teams for lots of different reasons (to create equal investment in both houses, to enhance the experience by working with different people and to get to know the native workers on the other site). The final vote... 11 to 1... boo for me :(
We were all sore and the work today was hard. We continued to dig to China for the dirt to use to fill in the foundation and create the ground floor. We found more snake eggs and plenty of delicious HUGE ants for Goo-ga-la the chicken to eat! :) The chief told us today that the chickens are all free range... when we asked him how they get the eggs to eat then and he responded that the children have to go out and look for them every day. Sounds like Easter morning comes to KTK EVERY morning! :) I wonder if someone walks around wearing a bunny suit? :) Just kidding!
On the site today Ashley and Marc started talking lots of pictures of the kids that had gathered on the site. I was getting really frustrated with how little they actually worked... the other 4 people on the team were drenched in sweat, filthy dirty, exhausted and annoyed by them taking such long breaks. Seriously... they would work for 5-10 minutes and then play with the kids for 45 minutes! I must admit, the children are super adorable... but there is also a part of me that felt it was rude or culturally insensitive to get up in the kids faces to take a picture of them. We don't know these kids, and they don't know us. They've never seen a camera before and there you are sticking a Canon zoom lens less than a foot away from their face? To me that just seemed really insensitive.
After work, we decided to forgo heading back to shower and decided to walk into town. I walked along with Tim and he and I talked about his work, his family and comparing this build to the one he went on in India. SUPER cool guy! About 45 minutes into our walk, Nii started to grab separate taxi cabs to take us the rest of the way in to Drobo (a nearby town and the only town with a market). 4 of us piled into the back seat and two in the front of one taxi. Nii had already sent the rest of the team in two different taxi's. Our taxi's windshield looked as if it had been used as batting practice for the Padres! It was completely shattered in about 5 different places and the entire thing looked like a big spiderweb! Not to mention the 12 month old child sitting on the driver's lap! Good times! In Drobo some people went to buy fabric to have sewn into outfits. The seamstresses used the COOLEST turn of the century sewing machines that they had to spin by hand (no electricity). Their iron was cast iron and opened up to put hot coals in! Makes me think twice about complaining about how I don't like to iron! :) On the way home it started to POUR rain!!! We ran for a trow trow (a taxi-like van).
Once back home, we learned that the rain had flooded our showers and the outhouse had overflowed. There were a few men from the village there trying to clean up the mess for us. The electricity was out and so we all sat on the porch with our headlamps journaling and drinking. We ate dinner inside by putting our headlamps on the table and pointing them at the ceiling.
The chief showed up @ about 7:30 and I suggested we play a game of UNO. The chief had never played before and so he sat between Crispin and I and tried to learn how to play. He got really into it and would tap Crispin or I on the arm whenever it was our turn and we were dawdling. At one point, I leaned to the chief and said "ok, what card do you think I should play?" He looked very serious for the moment and then picked the card that would best set Crispin up for a good play!!! I couldn't believe it!!! He totally cheated!!! I ended up going outside to sit with Jennifer who was journaling alone and I gave the chief my cards... he gladly took them over :)
After the chief left, Betty pulled out the drum that she had recently gotten in Ghana. Nii had started to play it and then quite, reserved Regina (the cook) stepped in and began to play that drum like no one's business! They even taught some of the team how to do some of the traditional dances! Right before heading to bed... we were still sitting outside with our headlamps on when someone came walking up. It was Kolfi (the chief's cousin) and he was soaking wet. He said "God brought you to KTK and now, because we came, God has given us rain." VERY cool! Good night all!
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