Already 5 days done?

Yet another day of work completed. Today was uneventful, but full of stories nonetheless. After 3 episodes of Community last night, I got some good rest and sleepwalked through yet another early breakfast. As I was getting ready to go out, Baba Philip gave me a saw, and I discovered I was to stay behind to chop down bamboo for the garden we’re building. Because the garden is sloped, we had to make steps, which look great. The thing is, we had nothing to keep these steps in place, so this morning we were to cut down 12 trunks of bamboo that were the equivalent of 5 saw lengths, so they could fit in the van to be transported. We decided the best way to do this would be to cut down the three tallest and straightest trunks of bamboo, and cut them into shorter pieces. The first one was quite a task, but we got it taken care of without any major difficulty. The second one, after we discovered the way to take care of it, was supposed to be even easier. We got through the trunk with relative ease, and I had to kick it off the stump to get it to fall. The thing is, when it fell, it was long enough to stretch across the street and get caught in the telephone wire. We spent a good 10 minutes trying to wrestle this giant bamboo tree out of an active telephone wire without causing the wire to break and electrocute everyone in the area. We finally got it out, and were more careful with the next selection we made. We chopped all 3 down by the time Baba returned with the van, and loaded the 12 trunks into the van and took off after an hour and a half of manly work.

When we got to the service site, we found out no one was working on the house because of the fact that it was possibly going to rain today, and we weren’t supposed to work when it was raining or something (still a little foggy on the reasoning there). We really just moved a bunch of sand from one site to another for the 2 hours we were there. That half of the morning was incredibly unproductive from the point of view of service for Walk in the Light. That half of the morning was incredibly productive from the point of view of talking about hypothetical situations with Logan and great food with Allie. After that, we headed over to eat lunch, and talked about plenty of things, including personalities and love languages and human diversity. Really, today was the best work site day for conversations thus far.

After food and a nice nap, Riley and I played a 2 on 2 game of soccer with Spay and Sihle. Spay is a constant fixture in the afternoon, and after he woke me up with three solid steps on the crotch region and I took a couple minutes to recover, the game started. It was fun and great, and Sihle is a very talented soccer player. Everyone here is a very talented soccer player it seems.

We played for half an hour or so, and then we went to meet with the women. The men never came, so all boys and girls were gathered to hang out and play games with the women. There were about 10 of them, and they were very timid when the guys first came into the room, but after a couple of minutes and games and songs, they started to loosen up a little. One of the girls read a passage that Sihle translated to start, and that didn’t garner much response. So we sang “Aleko Ofana NoJesu” again, as it seems to be the only Zulu song we know. After that game we played a game of Zulu/English Telephone. The Zulu words were always full of clicks at the beginning, but by the end there was maybe one. The English ones were even worse: “Jonah and the Whale” turned to “To know is the way” and “I choose you Pikachu” (PJ decided they would know what Pikachu was. They didn’t.) eventually became “Jesus is a Penguin.” This game was followed by a ninja game that basically comprised of making fun sounds, a game called “bong-zip,” and Jigalo. They all were fun and hilarious, especially bong-zip with one of the small old women. She was indescribably hilarious (I would describe how funny she was but I’m still not sure why it was funny).

That led to now, where I’m blogging before my shower as I do every day. Tonight we may go out to eat for Saint Patrick’s Day, but that’s still up in the air because we didn’t give enough notice to the drivers. Tonight will probably consist of an Irish movie to celebrate, along with some journaling and maybe some poker. Who knows?

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everyone!

After a long day of work with tools.
Before a crazy zombie attack in Haniville.
3/15/11

The old house, after Colton and I removed the roof, but before it was torn down. The new one will look similar to this, except much cleaner and with more love. 

Lunchtime/naptime. It's crazy how quickly 2 hours
goes by when you're sleeping.

Me with (from left by heads) Mongolisa (or Little Derek Fisher who calls me "Mackennick"), Teb, and Spay (the constant presence at Walk in the Light/suspect who landed 3 solid shots below the belt to a sleeping Mackenzie today.