Friday, January 29, 2010
Am I crazy to be doing this again? Part III
The best part about working in Izzie-ville is that it's driving the Kookies crazy. Every single person in Kookie-ville knows that the Izzies are building bathrooms in their school, and every single day I get asked by at least half a dozen Kookies how far the Izzies have come, have they finished yet, and are they working well? I love being able to give daily updates on the progress, and confirm that yes, the Izzies are working extremely well. The day we brought three vans full of bricks and cement and rebar home, some thirty-five men and boys showed up to help unload. When we brought the same materials to the Kookie school in August, one man showed up from the Association, and my sitemate and I and a ten-year-old boy unloaded two tons of cement and some 700 bricks by ourselves. Every day that the Izzies work, tea and bread and pancakes appear from at least two or three women in the village, and there's really nothing I can do to help because there are already more people trying to volunteer their help than are really needed. Quite a difference from the Kookie experience, where I personally carried countless buckets of water from the well, unloaded tractors full of sand and rocks, mixed cement, painted, and ran whatever other errands weren't going to get run if I didn't do them.