Another Good Day

Students help dig the holes for the footers

Horse and wagon...Africa style. Kevin's the horse and Don's the driver

PE Class for the 11th and 12th graders right beside the W&W House

Tim sporting his sun hat. It goes so well with his suspenders.

I am reporting once again from the seminary chapel veranda. Tonight the air is dry and the moon is bright. There is a steady cool breeze keeping things down to about 75 to 80 degrees. The moon is full and bright and shining off the sparse puffy clouds moving across the night sky.

Critters that sound like crickets and locusts are singing in the background. I can hear students running around campus having a good time enjoying the evening. These sounds are all pleasant. The only unpleasant sound every night is the noise from some kind of bugs that sound like a bunch of children with no sense of rhythm communication with Morse code by banging small rocks together. The chorus of clapping rocks grows louder and nearer for a while and them it calms down and in the distance comes the reply of other rhythmless rock clapping bugs responding in Morse code. Then the cycle repeats. Fortunately the drone of our room fans and the sheer exhaustion from the day's work keeps us from being kept awake for long by this racket.

It was another beautiful day in Maputo today. The sun was bright and hot but there was an almost constant breeze coming in off the Indian Ocean, making things quite pleasant, especially in the shade. After breakfast we headed back to the familiar shadow of the rebar tree to finish the last couple of sections of ring beam reinforcement. That only took a couple of hours. The rest of the day was spent on the actual site of the gymnasium. Mid-morning we left our tree and hauled tools to the building site and surveyed for the location of the 14 holes and started digging. By lunch the seven holes on the north side of the building where done: 1 meter wide by 1 meter long by 1 meter deep.

After lunch we were joined by seminary students who helped dig the final seven holes. They also helped move the extra layer of dirt, a foot or so deep,  from the back of the lot to the low spots near the front. The dirt moving was hard work but was made easier with the extra help from the students. There is more dirt to move but it is far enough along to start pouring the footers and columns. The laser level was acting up but it worked well enough and long enough to get the corners and the center posts leveled for our earth moving. At the end of the work day a couple of trucks arrived with cement and gravel. Tomorrow we should be ready to pour the footers for the 14 columns. Once again Connie’s crew outdid themselves with great food, especially our spaghetti dinner attended by the team plus ten other guests. Everyone is fine and doing well. It was a good day.