Today we woke up at 6am feeling quite exhausted from our previous day. Breakfast was the usual, a full English breakfast with eggs, baked beans, sausages and some bread. We ate a lot to prepare ourselves for our last full day of work which we knew would be very busy. We rode on the bus which somehow seams longer each day and arrived at the work site. Our first jobs were to put a sun shade above the garden and put more coats of paint and primer on the walls. A team of creative students then drew some extremely accurate graphics of animals, planets, and wrote the alphabet, numbers, and welcome in multiple languages on the outside walls of the crèche. Our team would like to think that we have brought lots of visual joy to the village.
After lunch, we focused on making more cement, colouring in the drawings, and adding some final touches. One challenge was that we are not permitted to work on the roof as it is quite dangerous and so the construction was left to a small group of workers. This meant we couldn’t work in specific places through out the day just in case the roof would fall on our heads.
During the afternoon, we paused our hard work to listen to Manga talk about “Nelson Mandela day”. The 18th of July, being Mandela’s birthday, is a special celebration for the South Africans who celebrate South Africa’s first ever black president. Mandela did important work for 67 years and so we dedicated 67 minutes to him. We sang songs with the workers and learned about his work. We were on the site for an extra hour today as so much had to be done.
It has been so fun to work with the project team (shoutout to Trey) and we are so excited to hand over our complete project tomorrow.
Elsie, Elliott
