It’s the last big push to finish up the houses today. A group of us will be going tomorrow for just a few hours in the morning, but it’s the final full day here in Gerkhutar. Once again we ate breakfast at 6:30 but didn’t get on the road til almost 8. It seems like there is a lot of time being spent in the mornings that we could be busy. That being said I’m taking plenty of breaks during the day as well, so that’s just as bad… On the way up to the homes, we stopped by the third site that we provided materials for. We were calling it the jungle house, since it’s a decent distance off the road, into the trees. It would be nice if we could at least get a start on this home, but we still have quite a bit of work on the others.
Instead of stopping at the church and hiking 10 minutes into the hills, the drivers actually took us up to the sites by Jeep. This was kind of nice, but the hike up always seemed to get my muscles moving and my blood pumping, got me prepared to work. Anyway, we kept our same groups and kept getting more and more built, until around noon.
The new master of the house
Bamboo scaffolding
The young lady of the house, Sidhi
Once the last of the cement pile was used up we had lunch again at the church. Only today we got our donation supplies out, and it was like Christmas morning! The families, especially the kids, were so excited for all the new clothes, shoes (especially shoes, they were the first things gone) and craft/school supplies. I saw kids later in the afternoon already wearing the new shirts! They were so proud of things that we would discard; we really don’t fully appreciate all the things that we have.
We finally got our block shipment right as we had decided to quit work at our site, so after unloading the truck and stacking all the blocks where we wanted them, we headed over to the second site. They had just mixed a full batch of cement, so everyone worked together and pounded out a whole bunch more block. Even with a later start, this second house is really making progress. With their cement finally gone, we headed back down to the church, where they had a small performance. Some of the young women sang some songs, and they presented each of us all with a garland of flowers and a little plaque. It was unbelievably kind of them to spend their time on this when they have so little.
DInner at the hotel was quick as we are all very tired, and it finally started storming; we will have to see how much of an issue this causes in the morning. I’m getting excited to be coming home soon. All the kids running around and hearing them laugh makes me think of the laughs I’m missing at home.
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