katherine's community challenge

The build

Wednesday 5 April

Back at Wenamulla, the foundation walls needed to be finished so we started work on those. The temperature was about 38°C in the shade, nearer 50°C in the sun - much, much hotter than Monday or Tuesday - even the Sri Lankans said it was too hot to work! We moved sand from near the temple entrance, along the path to the house site. Fortunately much of the path was in shade but the sweat was still dripping off us by 8.30 am. I tried working with Somasiri, the head mason, to build the foundation walls but discovered that I am no good at selecting the right shape of stone - my talents lay in slopping the mortar on and fetching and carrying. Jenny proved very good at the wall building. Andrew and Aidan cracked on working with Kirthi, the other mason who had joined our team.

At lunch time, Sarah tended to a few minor injuries and we heard about the young couple whose house her team were building. When the first wave had hit, they had got the sick father and the mother to safety in the temple - they then went back to the beach to look at the way the water had disappeared, heard a roar and saw a huge wave in the distance - they had run 1km inland to escape the wave - their house was flattened but one of the temple buildings survived the wave and provided many people with a safe refuge. The couple said that after the tsunami, they had no water to drink for 24 hours and no food for 3 days - the water around them was black and dirty.

After lunch, we went for a short walk to see a house about 400m further inland where the water line from the tsunami was visible. Julie could only just reach the line by standing on tiptoes.

Nalinda surveys the site

Kirthi, a mason, builds the foundation wall

Progress so far - still a long way to go!

Irin

Julie points to the water mark

We were told that there were worries that there were still bodies in the lagoons by the houses - when the foundations were being excavated, the body of a dog was found but fortunately not any humans.

As it was so hot and there was no shade at all on site, a huge plastic sheet was rigged up to provide shade - this seemed to work although it did mean we had to bend a lot. The afternoon was spent finishing off the foundation walls - Debbie and Sue came from their site to help and started levelling off the floor. The final job of the day was moving the concrete blocks to form piles around the perimeter of the house, ready for building the walls the next day. Irin helped with this - we kept a watchful eye open for scorpions and snakes which could have been lurking under the blocks!

In the evening, we walked down the road from the hotel and had a barbecue with dancing entertainment provided by students - very good indeed (much better than the professional dancing we were to see in Kandy later on).

Kirthi and Aidan working in the shade

Debbie and hoe

Sunset from our hotel room

A dancer

A scary masked dancer

The cobra from the cobra and peacock dance

Another dancer

Dancer and 'victim'

Fire eating

Fire walking

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