tuesday - we arrive, we start, we sweat like idiots.

ok. so we are super lucky to be staying in a hotel and not sleeping on the floor of the church, as originally scheduled. (thank you mark!) so we spend our first night at the bluu nile hotel. i could have used my sister's sniper skills this morning to rid ourselves of what we've deemed the monkey-rooster that woke us at 4am. turns out the hens are kept in the kitchen in small cages and our room had an adjacent wall. but - hey, i have running water and a door so i'll shut up. :) my roommate and i were laughing so hard the girls in the next room heard us.

after our first day on the build sight i wrote in my journal 'i've never been so tired, stinky, dirty or sunburned in my life.' i didn't know that the next day would top that. ha! we are building in an area that has an 80% poverty rate - by kenya standards - and it's not good. again - the pictures will show you. we are building 2 homes near each other, so our team is splitting up and switching back and forth. the homes are built as the materials are purchased - one home we can complete and the other we can do everything but the roof. we are literally working in a jungle type setting, very lush and tropical - the fruits and vegetables they grow here are endless. our tasks have included mixing cement, digging trenches, stacking and moving bricks and rocks, shoveling sand, making grout and laying brick.

the skilled professionals here are called fundis. they are like the foreman of a team. a fundi is paid - get ready for this - the equivilent of $4 per day. he needs to hire guys to help him with each job and their wage comes out of that same $4. so some of these incredible, hard working, iron men i've come to know are making .50 or less per day. PER DAY. this is back breaking work in crazy heat. honestly - i've never seen anyone work like this - and they do it without breaking a sweat. it's nuts. i've got some great pictures of these guys - they are really something. they are teaching us swahilli and we are teaching them english and spanish. most of them know enough english to get us to do what they want...but the spanish is new and fun for them. they are very smart and pick each phrase up the very first time.

one worker named paul is an older guy and he sits under a tree all day and breaks rock with a hammer for the concrete mix. he sat there all day doing that and when we were getting ready to leave i noticed one of the guys going over and helping him up. turns out he's blind. those of you who know me well know what i'm thinking. how in the world? ugh. it's really hard to see some of the things i'm seeing.