Brick Breaker

8 o'clock prayer came and went in 10 minutes. Today I would be working with Evance for the whole day. Here is the jungle-gym. One day I will only take the day to show you the facilities and places around Hope Village. This jungle-gym is sometimes covered int kids climbing on everything from the swings to the trees to the little pyramids.

Jungle-Gym.

George, Gifti's nephew, would be working with Evance and I today. As we waited for Evance to go get the Bantam Ford pickup, all the kids came walking in to the day care/preschool centre for their morning schooling.

Last night some Dutch people arrived at the village to stay for a week. They had lived at Hope Village for eight years, and then two years ago they decided on going back to Holland. Paul and Ester had three children ages 1 and a half, 4, and 5. Paul was a huge guy about 6'4''. He said his older brothers were taller than him. Wow. Lol.

Paul at his highest in life.

Evance arrived, and George and and I jumped into the Bantam. We took off down the road. The dirt roads here are covered in molasses to keep the dirt and dust down. They use big trucks and pour it all over the roads. It literally turns the roads into something like concrete.

Here is the place we are working at today. Our job: to prep the floors for concrete in the bedrooms.

We are only working in these rooms. There are four rooms.

We use this thing to smash bricks. It weighs about thirty pounds. Then we pick it up and smash it down onto the bricks.

Our job is to take this.....

These bricks are made out of mud and clay and burnt into bricks like the one below. They use all these to make their houses and buildings.

.....And to smash this down.

So we started. George and I filled up a wheel-barrel with a ton of these bricks and brought them inside to the rooms.

We brought four wheel-barrel amounts of bricks to each room. So.. sixteen wheel-barrel loads.

George hard at work.

'The Empty Room'

Then we poured four wheel-barrel loads into each room.

Then we grabbed the hammer and the sledge-hammer and smashed these bricks to pieces. It was another fun smashing game. Lol.

Then we grabbed the thirty pound smasher and busted those bricks to even smaller pieces. And this is what the finished product looked like. Then the Malawians will put cement over top of this to create their nice concrete flooring. I know it looks like George is doing all of the work, but that is what happens when you take the photos - you look like the lazy guy.

The finished prepped floor!

*!EXPLICIT CONTENT!*

As we worked, George told me about an evil village called Chirazulu. I asked him to tell me about the worst thing he had ever heard about what happens in the area. Chirazulu is a few hours car ride away from here. The people there will kill their own friends to get their genitals. They will sell these at the black market for fish food. People will buy the genitals for around 250, 000 kwatcha, so that is why it is happening. It only happens in Chirazulu.  WELL THEN. Back to business.

At noon, Evance came to bring George back to our house for lunch. So I was free for the next two hours.

Here we are driving back through the village.

I had my lunch and decided to take a nap. I passed out pretty fast and slept till two when Evance came to pick me up.

Why not?

We drove back to the job and finished our job for the day. It took us about another two hours, and finally we were done all four rooms. Evance drove us back.

That evening I was awoken by Leila to get my Panga Knife. We ran outside and gave a guard the Panga, and he started swinging it at a Spitting Cobra. It spat at Darren and got his hand. He said it burned him. The guard managed to damage up its neck and kill it. Even if it was dead, snakes here move around after they're killed, so we have to be careful around it. It is around four feet long.

Spitting Cobra