brick-making

it's currently thursday 23rd.. i haven't yet written about the past 4 days given we've pretty much done the same thing throughout. the 1 & 2 monthers left monday morning for the elephant sanctuary and since it's just been our small group of 9 3-monthers at muhaka. we thankfully didn't have to go back into the pit with nipple man and instead opted to make bricks this week as we need a good 1000 in order to build the toilet block.. morning starts similarly to cementing - wheelbarrows of sand are pushed to the brick-making area and mixed with cement, chalk (to help them dry faster & have a lighter colour) and water (that we fetch and carry back from a communal tap a while away). it's hard work; the shovelfuls become so heavy once water is added and it needs to be properly churned up. we then separate the mix into wheelbarrows and spread them out for easy access. from there it's all up to you, your trowel, your pounder, your brick mold and your level of patience..

the first time i went to make bricks i assumed it'd be like clay and fairly easy to do. it's not.. in order for the bricks to stick together, you need to pound the mix down into the mold after every trowel-ful or two. this takes a whie. then once the mix reaches the top of the mold and you've smoothed off the top, the fun part begins!! cutting out the bricks is actually so difficult.. you need to constantly wet your trowel and repeatedly slice along the edges of the mold, trying to go through to the bottom.. and after you've done that a few times, you hope for the best and try to shake it out. honestly with me, 2/3 times the brick remains stuck inside or only the bottom drops out or the mix is too wet/dry and the whole thing crumbles as soon as it slops out. it is actually so frustrating.. i'll admit that i've had multiple exasperated rages at my stubborn bricks, been told i'm disturbing the 'peaceful brick-making aura' and asked to go dig another pit somewhere [all in good humor]. and especially frustrating is watching our legendary camp helper, sampuli, who is an expert brick-maker and has picture-perfect, straight, smooth bricks every single time. i can't actually comprehend why our final products look so different!!! it seems simple enough.. i'll confess that i now more often than not ask for his help to carve my bricks out, i'm so much more productive that way.. and by wednesday we had a whopping 630 bricks!!! [keeping in mind that other groups were making them since our arrival in kenya]

after 3hrs straight of making bricks (every so often needing to re-make mix), i was bored. so bored. i missed the hard, sweaty pit workouts and their relentless digging pace.. this seemed so repetitive and i was dreading a full week of it.. but i'm a firm believer that you ultimately control your own mood and decided to try and find a source of motivation in order to make the week a little less dull. i decided to make bricks with people's names on them (as you'll be able to see in the next post) and it actually is making a big difference in keeping me relatively entertained (: i have so many names in mind and each time i complete a brick displaying one i feel a small sense of accomplishment and amusement at the thought that the person in question will be forever immortalized in the walls of a kenyan pit toilet.. SUCKED IN!!!!

oh and as a side note: nipple has actually just joined us at brick-making and has given the same disturbing speech to the other girls there.. he pretty much just stands around and watches us without doing anything. it's really creepy.. i've no idea why he's actually there.. i feel bad because he's not technically done anything wrong but i think there must be something behind the bad vibe we all seem to get from him. he's made maybe 8 bricks over the past 4 days and on one of them wrote 'much sex'. what the fuck??

so yeh, that's pretty much it thus far. i wish i had brought a mountain of books with me because from 4pm to bedtime we really don't have much to do here.. we've watched another few movies on my laptop but i'm running out fast. the 3-monthers are really lovely; it's a nice, chilled group dynamic.. and i guess it's a good thing we're spending some time together like this given we'll be living with each other for a while! we also actually had 3 people (ashton, ellie & zoe) return from the elephant sanctuary on tuesday as they were either feeling unwell or just wanting to come back to muhaka for various reasons.. hopefully the issues they had with the sanctuary staff will be resolved before it's our turn to head over there.

we've got around 140 bricks to go which we'll hopefully smash out in time for the weekend (: it's now dinner time and i'm starving so i'm off! and by the way, the two hand photos are the result of working with your hands in concrete for 4 days straight.. i've moisturized them more than i ever have before in my life and they just crack and dry out hardcore.. now there are still sheets of skin peeling off them, i look like an old hag with a skin infection, it's charming.. probably something to do with the fact that concrete is toxic?? i'm thinking donning my gloves again might be a smart idea..