The school (Beam Level)
Bending bars to make the beams. They come in coils so you have to straighten them.
One of my buddies eating his lunch (porridge) in the grass with a piece of sugar cane for a spoon. (I'm a converted lover of sugar cane)
Straightening the other wire thingies to make the triangular frame used to make the beams.
Fitting the wires and bars together.
Children... An Interesting Phenomenon
Midway through the day, the adult workers took a seat in the shade and something crazy happened. Children emerged and began doing labor. What's more, they were completely unsupervised. We spent several days digging dirt and moving it into the school rooms to raise the foundation level. Keep in mind, these next pictures show kids, none of whom were being told what to do.
Children digging and relocating dirt into the new classrooms
Children digging and hauling dirt with no adult supervision/direction. Smart kids.
It was mind boggling how effective these kids were. Teamwork came naturally.
Using old pots and any form of bucket you can find to relocate the dirt.
I'm pretty sure that if my elementary school teachers left a group of us to do work like this, we would all be sitting around until someone came out to yell at us. Even then, we would stagger around not knowing how to proceed.
Walking Home From Seya
A couple kids down the road from our house using a fallen tree limb as a toy horse/motorcycle
"It's not easy work rustlin' broncs all day, and then you crazy bald white folk come along and want to come take my picture. Do as you must, just keep quiet or you'll scare off the cattle. "
A day or two later back at Seya
Assembly line from a different location. Children passing containers with dirt to fill up the classrooms. (Latrine under construction in the background)
Little kids here love having their picture taken. These guys asked me to take theirs so I did.
After Seya That Day
Troy and I noticed a small group gathered by the motorcycle taxi drivers who were laughing and yelling. We decided to investigate.
It turned out that the motorcycle taxi drivers and a few other locals were playing this really funny game where you place a bottle on the ground and then the person who is playing paces 7-10 steps from the bottle where he is blindfolded. He then has to walk back to where he thinks the bottle is and kick it. As you might expect, people look pretty silly as the clumsily walk in the wrong direction and kick violently into the air nowhere near the illusive bottle. I've never seen a group of Ugandans laugh so hard/have so much fun as these motorcycle taxi guys were having that day.
So naturally, I had to give it a try.
Step... Step.... Step
........ and a swing .....and a miss............ but as you can see, I was pretty dang close. My left foot landed just to the side of the bottle and I kicked just to the right of the bottle. They all laughed hysterically. Which made it all the more fun for me.
The crowd kept getting bigger and bigger. Everyone was having a good time. Troy and I had never seen anything like this before so we decided to document it.
More people (on the outskirts of town. You can see in the background the roads leading to the sugarcane fields and then on to Seya village)
A swing and a miss.......Troy had to give it a try as well.... and... you guessed it... They all laughed at him too. I was no exception.
