digging the pit toilet

i once again am a dirt-covered abomination. i think i'm gonna need to wash some clothes really soon, i'm absolutely filthy and my hands are covered in blisters (faaaanks dad).. today we basically split up into three groups in order to tackle three separate projects: plastering the school walls, making bricks and digging out a hole for the soon-to-be community pit toilet. i was eager to do some hard work and decided to head out for some digging, hoping that using the same tools for a week will toughen up my hands and i won't have this blister problem as badly for the rest of my stay.. jane (part of the aussie group) was the only other girl who joined us (surprisingly) and the lot of us headed out to start work.

imagine basically a pit 1.3m deep (it was briefly started yesterday afternoon but we hardly worked long enough to bother me documenting it), a few shovels, djembes and a pickaxe.. and that's pretty much it. we'd have maybe 4 people in the hole at any given time and 4 people out either resting or clearing away the soil from the sides.. it was back-breaking work. we had to hoe out and break away the earth, which is more like yellowish clay, then shovel it out the pit.. and although at first it was alright, the deeper the hole got the harder it became to lift the dirt up over our shoulders to actually reach the ground.. we worked on a sort of rotation basis but even so everyone was absolutely buggered after just an hour. i've gotta say though that i'm really enjoying working with this team because everyone's got a good attitude and was going hard (:

eventually the pit grew over all our heads and we had to dig foot-holes up one of the walls in order to get in and out of it. sam brought his ipod speakers which made a huge difference to our morale and i must say that shoveling dirt in the middle of kenya listening to british radio charts was really amusing.. one thing that started becoming a problem with me was the state of my blisters because although i'm all up for trying to man up and soldier on, it really was quite painful.. sam had brought two pairs of work gloves and kindly lent one pair to me which made a massive difference (: after almost 3hrs it started sprinkling a little and we decided to head back for lunch.. once i've eaten, it's time to get a ladder and some buckets and work will resume..