Building Blocks

As you may know, one of the projects that we’ve been working on in the village is a new school for the children of Hurso. In July, a team of volunteers came to lay the foundation for the building, making a good head start on the four room schoolhouse. Unfortunately the walls weren’t finished during the initial phase of construction and when Ian and I arrived there were about 200 blocks missing from an end of the school as well as two of the middle partitions. In order to move forward, we needed to get those blocks laid and the stucco put on. So the beginning of last week we found a contractor named Habtamu and met with him to figure out the details of the project. The next morning we were bumping along the road out to Hurso with all of the materials. As soon as we pulled up we got right to work. After pounding together some rickety looking scaffolds we mixed up a big pile of goo-goo-bah which is the Amharic word for the mud/clay mixture used to lay the hollow blocks. Yes, the word was developed by kids playing with mud pies and it lends itself to songs very well. After a full day of hauling, shoveling, lifting, and goo-goo-bahing we had 190 blocks laid, all three walls completed, and we were ready for the stucco which we finished by lunchtime the following day. As the hours passed different villagers would show up and pitch in, helping carry buckets, keep the masons supplied with blocks, or mix up a fresh batch of stucco cement. I think my favorite part was when Ian and I began sanding down a couple of the metal windows. A couple of kids stuck their heads in the room and when they saw us scrubbing away a small crowd began to gather. Ian and I thought to ourselves, “If Tom Sawyer could do it, why not us?” After building it up a bit and showing them just how cool sanding really was, we passed out sandpaper and stuck two on each windowsill. Soon we had a little party going on, everyone happily sanding away, sticking their heads out the window and yelling to the kids in the next window down. It was really great working alongside our Ethiopian brothers and sisters and seeing all of the sweat pay off. We were under budget by 15% and done in half estimated time- and we managed to finish sanding and painting all of the metal doors and windows! That’s called gittin’ er done!