toilet week

literally a nothing weekend. nothing to report, nothing much happens.. other than one of the 1-monthers letting us shave his head. i'm missing people and fairly down.. we head to thieves during the days as per usual.. night times watching the big bang theory or films.. as i said, nothing to report.. i hope this gloominess evaporates soon, the void in camp is still there and the new 1-monthers more or less keep to themselves (other than Mr. Stephen Draper on occasion).

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my whole week is dedicated to continuing the pit toilet whilst the 1-monthers decide to take on the mud house. our first step is to continue building up the walls with the last 2 layers of bricks & plaster the surfaces with cement as we'd previously done. our helper, kanga, sets up a wooden structure on two adjacent sides to start brickwork on the roof support. whilst he does this, we're instructed to start coating the plastered walls in white paint - a mixture of chalk and water. the paint brushes are pretty ruined so its pain-staking work and given the repetitive nature of the task, i soon decide to plug in my ipod headphones and work to a soundtrack. it's incredible the difference it makes.. time passes faster and the beats maintain my rhythm.

once the walls are painted over, we start on a second coat.. then realise that kanga has begun to chip holes into them to insert metal binding in order to later fix the roof on.. the result is gaping breaks in the plastering and cement dribbles all down the white surfaces. it seems so pointless to be carefully painting walls that apparently aren't yet completed!! and even moreso, once his roof-holding brick triangles are completed they need to be plastered and once again our white walls become streaked in brown. to be honest it's really quite de-motivating.. none of us have a clue as to how the toilet is going to be completed and it seems we've been given tasks that are futile and disorderly as opposed to a clear building plan which wastes time and resources.

a few of us end up having a chat to dipesh on his camp drop-in and we're told that we'll be having another staff member, yaya, join us the following day.

[note: there's been a big group of high-school kids living in tents right next to muhaka for about 3 or 4 weeks who have also been working on projects.. yaya and sampuli were delegated to their group, which has slowed down work for us a lot as they were our main work motivators/supervisors towards the start of our trip.. i think the school group's presence is also what resulted in us having too many people at our two project sites instead of being spread out doing a variety of activities.. which would've reduced work monotony and given us a higher sense of achievement. it's quite frustrating!!]

working with yaya changed everything. he firstly explained to us quite clearly the steps remaining in completing the toilet which helped us to understand what it is we needed to do. every single person was given a task and as soon as the task was completed, another would be assigned.. it was so different to just sitting around waiting for 2 people to mix cement and trying to guess what we were supposed to do next. everyone was so motivated and going hard.. some would fetch water whilst others mixed cement whilst a trio filled the toilet cubicles with soil to level the floor out whilst others measured & sawed wood for the doors.. joe and i got stuck into sawing long wooden planks coated in grimy creosote for the roofing structure. it was damn hard work - the planks were thick and dense and my arms felt like lead by lunch time. and whilst we sawed away, yaya was perched on the roof nailing together the planks we'd cut to size and keeping everyone in check.

something we realised during the flooring was that one of the toilet holes is right next to the cubicle wall instead of in the center.. this is another example of the work having been disorganised - when nipple was overseeing the original flooring of the pit, he designated the toilet hole areas in the corrugated iron sheets without measuring them up. we'd all been a bit abject to it but he seemed adamant that he knew what he was doing. and i can assure you it's pretty damn annoying that after 3 months of hard work the result will be 1 of the 4 toilets being incredibly difficult to use!! it's such an easily preventable thing..

anyway. trying to ignore this and the cement-stained walls, we continued on, this time cementing the side-step of the toilet to cover up the wires poking out from the flooring.. soon the roof skeleton was completed and joe and i took on big sheets of corrugated iron that needed to be measured up and cut using a machete and a hammer (something i thoroughly enjoyed doing!!). each time we finished a piece it'd get handed up to yaya who, still perched on the roof, nailed it into place. meanwhile the floors were cemented and groups of people got to work on the doors - nailing together the measured planks and fixing hinges to the side. the toilet was really starting to look like an actual building!! (: unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worst towards the end of the week and our newly energetic work schedule was put on hold for afternoon storms and patches of rain.. but whenever we could we continued.

camp life in general was pretty standard i guess.. i powered through 3 or 4 books trying to keep occupied when not at work.. spent more time with the remaining members of our group.. got hooked on 'big bang theory' episodes that toni had left behind on her hard drive. just generally attempting to fill up the time that otherwise felt lonely without sam and the boys around. i think i was sadder than i let up.. especially with the rain settling in and less time working on projects, hours in camp seemed long. i'm at a point where i'm moreso looking forward to my namibia trip than the rest of my stay in kenya..