- Hearing - the sound of children laughing as Hunter tosses them up to "touch the sky": Check
- Sight - the quiet dignity and strength in the faces of the ladies of La Cantera: Check
- Taste - snarfing down vast amounts of Erika's delicious cooking: Check
- Feeling - a child running full speed into you to give you a big hug: Check
- Smell - working down by the cesspits in the full sun and heat of the afternoon: Check
So, today Hunter, Meagan and I were working on the tests John McKinnon gave us to do on the land around the cesspits. (I feel like there is a different word for them but I can't think of it now...) At 9AM it wasn't so bad. In fact, the area just below them is lush and green with lots of thick vegetation. Something that makes you go, "Hmmmm." Anyway, we had to dig 4 holes, each 3 feet deep, to do percolation tests on the soil. It takes longer than you think to dig holes in the dirt here. In fact, all morning. I must confess that at 11:57 we declared Hole 4 deep enough at 31 inches. It was either 5 more inches of digging or lunch. No contest. While we were doing that, Bonnie and Janet were doing yeoman's work painting the hallway. They got an amazing amount of work done. It was hotter and more humid today and the school doesn't have as much cross ventilation as you'd like. Nevertheless, they made huge progress.
After lunch, Hunter joined the ladies painting while Meagan and I recorded several topographical data about the land below the cesspits. She began pacing off the distance by literally going heel to toe, heel to toe, arms akimbo to keep her balance. I gently (when I say gently I mean laughing) suggested that counting the strides was probably good enough. "Ah yes," she remarked, "it's much faster this way." Then we took a video of the area as we made very scientisty observations about the terrain, vegetation, etc.
The most entertaining activity was figuring out the slope from the cesspits down to the little ravine. John had given us detailed directions, complete with illustrations. Sadly, he did not account for our nuttiness. Happily, though, Wilmer and Pedro came to help. We started tying the string John provided about 6” above the ground. We had to tie it to trees along the way, ensuring the string was level. The first tree was no problem. The next tree, a bit challenging, after that we needed a ladder. The final tree had Pedro climb up the ladder and into the fairly flimsy pine tree, scaling it higher and higher till we got the string level-ish. The string was 17 feet above ground! I have NO IDEA whether we did this right or not. Tomorrow we will do the perc tests because the pre-soak was slow. “Huh?” you might ask. “Beats me,” I reply, “ask John.”
This evening David joined us along with Erika, Andrea, and Maria for Holy Eucharist and then a delish dinner of papusas! We had the first rain storm of the week during dinner and it was raining so hard on the tin roof we had to eat in silence! You couldn’t hear anything! Soon it stopped and we had a lovely evening.
Joey and Alyssa - I made an executive decision that the peluchas you gave me to bring down would go to the newest children to welcome them to LAMB. The last picture is of Manuel, 6, who is Mirza's brother and arrived this week. I will give the others to Suzy to have on hand when she gets the other babies from Social Services. I hope that is OK.
Electricity is on and off so I will wrap up now. I can’t believe tomorrow is already Friday. Oh, arrgghhh, we did not see the man along the road today. Pray that we will tomorrow. Hasta manana!
