Shongweni day 4

I can't believe today was our second-to-last day in Shongweni.  We are really getting to know the kids in the village, and the family we are building the house for/with.  So many little faces watch and wave from the windows and doorways as we drive to the build site in the mornings.  About a dozen kids follow the bus to the build site and watch from the top of the hill until one of us has a chance to go play soccer with them or start a craft.

Today we finished the outside walls of the house and made some good progress on the interior walls.  We also started putting a finish on the outside with a technique called "bag washing" where you apply a watered down combination of the cement we've already mixed plus some extra cement powder to the walls with big brushes.  It is fun to see the imperfections in the blocks get filled in and the outside look more finished.  But it's also a huge mess, particularly if you're working under a ladder while someone enthusiastically applies the mix to the upper walls.  We alll have cement all over our hair, faces, and clothes.

The kids taught Matt and Anna a version of monkey in the middle, which they really seemed to enjoy.  They also love piggy-back rides, and playing with the American's "weird" long, straight hair.  We looked up from the house at one point and couldn't see Matt, only to discover he was under a pile of about 10 kids all of whom wanted to rub his hair.

We had lunch at the church, where some of the church ladies in the sewing group had brought their work to sell.  They do amazing things with simple materials like colored wire and the plants they weave placemats from.

After lunch we worked on the house for another couple of hours.  We made more kites with the leftovers we had from VBS, which the kids loved.  It was fun to look up from the walls we were building and see kites flying overhead.  Only a couple got tangled in the power lines, and we managed to rescue them both.

One little girl arrived after we'd used all the kites and started crying giant tears.  She was the same age as the other kids who know a fair amount of English, but wouldn't tell me what was wrong.  Thankfully we were not out of coloring books or crayons so I got her a set, and she spent the next hour coloring all of the pages and showing me her progress every time I walked by.  My suspicions that she knew some English were confirmed when she said goodbye with a hug and a "see you tomorrow."

I think we are all a bit sad that tomorrow is our last day.  The house won't be done, but Fauni our foreman says he can have it finished by next week.  I have a suspicion that he'll work just as fast if not faster without our "help."