India day 11 of 14

Day 11

When we arrived at the site today we were amazed to see a tractor and 7 men moving dirt. The tractor had a dump trailer attached. The men loaded the dirt into large aluminum buckets and carried them on their heads to the trailer then dumped them in. We then spread the dirt behind the building to a depth of approximately 24”. The purpose of the fill dirt is to keep the water off of the property in the rainy season. Unfortunately the tractor damaged some of the vegetation including a mango tree. This seemed to upset the watchman’s wife. She gave the Indian sign (Joe says this is actually the universal wife sound of disapproval) of disapproval when she made a sort of clucking/tsking noise.

After lunch we walked to ocean with the watchman and his son Emanuel. At the ocean was a finishing village with about 100 boats and about 30 catamarans. We arrived just as a group was moving a boat in and we pitched in and helped. They offered to take us out in the boats but we politely declined. It was a fascinating walk through the village. The village had been wiped out in the Tsunami and the government rebuilt the homes in the area.

We also worked on the aluminum partition walls and made some progress on them. There will be 3 total rooms upstairs. The partition workers have gone from using hacksaws the first day to joyfully using the power tools we bought. We are hoping to finish up the walls tomorrow and perhaps start the ceiling. Mano had a cameraman show up to take some pictures for his brochure. It wasn’t too hard of a work day, but it remained hot and humid.

After showers and a brief shopping spree, we got Dave and Ralph and went to dinner on a beautiful rooftop restaurant. Ralph finished the night with a video skype date with his wife.

Posted by Roger, Joey, Chris, and Keith.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►