katherine's community challenge

The build

Friday 7 April - the last day of building!

Nalinda was back today - he had been ill yesterday. We continued with the walls, mixing mortar and filling in the gaps between the blocks - the masons checking as we went along to ensure that the courses were level and straight! As it was our final day, we had a special treat at the tea break with jaggery (a sweet a little like fudge), cake and more bananas.

Nalinda asked Rosalin about what had happened to her in the tsunami - she had heard a noise and run 2km inland (apparently there was 30 minutes between the two waves), at the point she reached, the water was still up to about 5 or 6 feet deep. Her home was completely flattened. Since the tsunami she and her sister, Irin, had been living in a wooden house provided by an NGO - this was taken apart last week when the work started on the new house - the foundation of her old house was what we were using to mix the concrete and mortar on.

The two little girls from the house next to the build had dressed up for our last day - we took photographs and exchanged addresses with the family from that house. We were each given a lantern to hold a candle - the next week was the New Year - these holders are filled with candles and hung from trees everywhere for Buddha's birthday. The women and children make these lanterns.

Rosalin and Sharon

Rosalin, Irin and Nalinda

The last day's building

The little girls from next door

Somasiri fire-eating

After the afternoon tea break, Somasiri treated us to some fire eating (the HFH safety officer didn't want to hear about this for some reason). We then had a Q&A session at the temple with the second in command and another senior priest. The tsunami damaged most of the temple buildings apart from one - 2000 homeless people were living in the temple grounds for 3 months after the tsunami with no shelter. Now the temple has been rebuilt and is a central part of village life once more - pre-school children attend a nursery there.

Resting in the temple grounds

Still resting...

Me by the house

Mohammed in the front doorway of the house

Our team - Gill, Andrew, me, Sharon, Jenny, Jean and Aidan

We all gathered by one of the other houses being built for a team photograph - it felt quite sad to be leaving and I think many of us wished that we could have stayed longer - I would have been happy to stay for up to a month. But we had made a really good start on our three houses - the next teams would move in on Monday and continue where we had left off.

All 21 of us!

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