Day 7: Stepping it Up

Was up quite early this morning so spent a couple of hours writing the blog (for the last couple of days) and chatting to Nikki about random stuff. Some of the guys - Kerri, Simon, Paul and Tom went for a walk up the hill where we went the other night to see if there was a good view of Kilimanjaro in the morning...there wasn't!!

After breakfast, we divided into teams again for the days tasks. Many of us formed a conveyor belt and began shifting bricks and blocks ready to start making steps to replace the slippy/slidey/muddy slope that currently joins the upper and lower parts of the school. Once done, the boys helped to dig out the shape of the steps and then the fundies joined in and took over most of the hard graft (as we are not allowed).

The rest of the day was spent finishing off the classrooms (borders/black boards and the backs of the doors) and then starting to decorate them with appropriate educational content. We spoke to many of the teachers and the Owa School head around which content should be used in each classroom. This ranged from painting the English Alphabet in some classrooms, to maps of the world, the solar system, solar eclipses, Tanzania maps and geography information such as the water cycle and the time/clocks of the world as well as a compass.

Some off were feeling a bit stressed/tired/upset and emotional today and strangely there were several smaller groups of people working on their own (just to get a bit of "personal" space I think rather than because of being pissed off with anyone/thing in particular). I was ok today and felt quite happy with what we had accompanished so far. Just a bit tired.

Katie and I went for a nice long walk as she was feeling a bit tearful today. We walked out past the school and into the local village where every household we passed wanted to speak to us or say hello. There were some 20 something year old guys outside one little house - that shouted out "Aright Mate!". We found a little quite opening where you could see for miles and miles across all the mountain ranges...it looked like the green opening in the Twilight film! We also passed lots of people/families carrying huge amounts of bananas on thier heads. Really will make me think twice now when buying fruit...i never have tended to buy much fair trade food before but now I envow to always buy fair trade!

After lunch we continued the painting, step building and picture drawing. We continued through until dusk and then all went for showers...again it was dark when we finished - thanks to Nikki again for the Army issue glow sticks.

Evening for me was a short one....after dinner I managed to drink a Kilimanjaro beer before heading off to bed at around 10:00pm. Katie, Harry and Chris also retired early leaving most of the others up for a little. Some of the hard cores stayed up till around 1:00am and apparantly the chefs stayed up with them and got COMPLETELY drunk and were throwing up near the tents..nice.....fortunatley, those that know me know I sleep through anything so didnt hear any of it!!!