Project Work!

Hello all!! I wrote an amazing blog some time last week but it didn't publish which is rather pants but never mind, I'll try to remember what I wrote...

Basically for the past week we've all been getting to know one another and everyone's so nice! People have started to bond already, especially once the project work started...

Project work is mega mega hard... building some huge school canteen and they said it'll take another year for it to be finished. At first I thought they were exaggerating but everything takes so long to do... like a 15/20 minute job at home will take at least half a day here! It's crazy.

Rough outline of the work I've done so far (we're making beams for the roof):

• Had to cut up a hugeeeeee piece of thin wire which took a WHOLE DAY! We were given a pick axe and a hammer to cut it up... really hard work. If anyone had pliers it would've taken an hour max!!
• Sieved sand: 4 people had to hold the huge sieve whilst others dug the sand and shovelled it. Took a day and a half....
• Me, Hayley and Meg spent a bloody age sawing wood! My arms are getting rather buff now!
• Helped to make 'scaffolding'... hmmmm not too sturdy.
• Made all the brackets for the beams and connected them to 4 pieces of thick metal with the small strips I'd cut on the first day. Everyone cut majorly cut up which was not fun but hey ho.
• Made loads of concrete from scratch. Was mixing it with 4 others for half a day to stop it setting. You just mix it on the floor. It's really fun but tough work.
• Helped to put the concrete in the beams which was soooooo much effort. We had people mixing the concrete, a chain of about 10 passing the concrete and 3 people putting the concrete in the beam on top of the roof... using the makeshift scaffolding. Ah my arms were killing cos I had to lift these huge bowls of concrete above my head cos I'm so small!

Really pleased with our work though! There's only 7 of us left now because the others are 1 and 2 monthers and so go to the Kidia camp earlier than us. To send them off we all went out clubbing on Friday night. Was frigging asweome... after an eventful game of ring of fire we grabbed a bus into town with Tommie and all the Camp Tanzania workers and had suchhhhhhhhh a good night!

Really enjoying myself out here cos it's so sociable, out for meals quite a lot and there's always something to do. Yesterday all 7 of us lounged by the hotel opposites pool! It was boiling... tan is coming along rather nicely!

Weather is soooo bizarre here though! Had a huge storm last night, sounded like the tent was going to fly away! So our plan of doing some clothes washing is being postponed... cutting it fine with clean clothes now. Well not tops but most other things.

Hope all's well back home, ta ta for now! Love Sophiee xxxxxx