About a quarter of the bus unloaded, and the locals there to help carry.
Morris carrying steel to the site
Alex bending over...
Right, so off to the site we go. On the way, we make our daily stops to pick up Morris and Elizabeth and any other volunteer that live in the town just before Kochia. On this particular day, Margaret has already ventured in O’Lary (I have absolutely NO IDEA how to spell any of these village names…). Today is a big day. Margaret will be taking us to meet the Chief!! We need to meet the chief of the tribe and get his blessing, she says. So we detour to the ‘market’ (aka cluster of huts and shacks about 20 minutes out of the way). We get off the bus and proceed to walk another 10 minutes to the Chief’s hut. He’s out. We are asked to come back another day.
We dredge on.
As usual, we need to stop the bus about 3 or 4 km from Margaret’s since the ground too muddy to go any further. We unload the steel, all the tools, batteries, blades, generator, tail, boxes of books, and the 5 crates of pop Margaret had picked up at the market (see photo). It was going to be a loooong walk. Fortunately, the small crowd of very excited children and other locals that appeared everyday as we arrived, were back today. They were eager to help in anyway and were grabbing all the supplies as soon as they were taken off the bus and heading to Margaret’s. I started with two buckets; one in each hand. The buckets were full of bolts, tools, a gallon of water, etc. Then Margaret stopped me. She had one bucket that was slightly lighter so told me to take that. She took the two that were full, double stacked them, and popped them on her head. Then she reached for a third and put it on mine. The fourth she carried. Man, Kenyans have strong heads and necks. I looked around and the 5 or so children that had appeared out of the woodwork, we’re all carrying 2 or 3 pieces of steel on their head. Some not even 10 yrs old. I made it about 1km before a 90 lb, 14 yr old laughed and insisted I take the bucket off my head. (Ok, I lied, I didn’t even make it a kilometer.) She traded me a 5-liter water, placed the bucket on her own head and took off. I got showed up by a 14 yr old girl. Note to self: must practice carrying heavy objects on my head.
Khanjan and his freakishly fast pace, (he’s that guy that forces you to speed walk with random jog-steps thrown in to keep up with his normal pace. For a man who despises physical labor, he knows how to get places – and quickly)…. Khanjan and his freakishly fast pace somehow beat everyone to the top. I know that really has nothing to with anything, but we were all shocked he beat us and so I had to point it out. Granted, he was carrying a battery, so the 90lb 14 year old girl beats him too…
So anyways, about midday, with the sun at its hottest, we finally began to prepare the steel. The steel wasn’t galvanized, and so it needed to be scraped of all present rust (which was a heck of a lot to be modest), primed, and painted to prevent rusting. There were 4 to 6 volunteers to help so things went much better and by 6pm, the last coat of paint was on. All the volunteers were very helpful. We even had a one-legged guy named Jared who probably worked harder than all of the rest. He stood and leaned on his crutch and never took a single break the entire day. We were a brush or two short so everyone else was alternating, but he never stopped. And I can’t even imagine how long it took him to get to Margaret’s- if you haven’t figured this out from the photos, her house isn’t exactly near anything. Furthermore, I remember meeting him on the first day, and that was back in the village O’Lary, about 3 to 5km away.
Oh yeah, at the start of the day, Jason started steel brushing one of the columns and realized that there were a few holes that weren’t drilled…to be specific, the 48 holes that connected the four columns to the foundation columns somehow got forgotten. Needless to say, Jason spent the entire day hanging out at the welding/drilling shop in Homabay, which isn’t a bad trade-off when the other option was being out in the scorching sun with us.
I'd also like to take a moment and make a point. Back in Americana, right before the trip, Alex, Mark, Khanjan, and myself made a walmart trip to pick up any supplie we didnt think we'd find in Kenya. Plastic ties were on that list. I really wanted to get the colored ties, as color always helps in organization. The "boys" all agreed, but kind of looked at me as "the girl who wanted them because they were pretty." The tower pieces had an ABCD scheme to it so we knew where and how it got bolted together. It was all marked with permanent marker. WELL, explain to me how you are going to know what holes match up when the label is painted over? Oh that's right, you can't! But thanks to "wanting the colorful ties because they are pretty" we now had a pink, orange, yellow, and white plastic tie to hook onto each drill hole to correspond with A B C D. Go ahead, you can pat me on the back.
Fish for dinner!!
We finished painting just as it got dark. We cleaned our hands with turpentine as best we could – as that was the only cleaner available (which, for you painters out there, know that it burns like hell when you have cuts on your hands…which we all did), then tried to rinse it with soap and water. Then wiped our hands on our greased up/muddied up/paint covered top, and proceeded inside to eat dinner with our hands.
I think it was a good thing it gets dark so early when you’re on the equator. The fish tasted great, but I’m glad I didn’t have to see it. We only had the lantern to eat by and that was just enough to see you had something in front of you, something that was still hole with scales, fins, eyeballs…the works. Duan ate an eye ball. Well done him.
Tomorrow, we build!!
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