Day 125 – Tuesday 1st June 2010

The dogs were at it again last night, so we welcome in the month of June with slight fatigue. I am heading off to the shamba today so get to dress like a builder, and Armorel is again saving lives at the clinic.

She spent most of the day helping out Dr Jim and saw and did a number of interesting things. She saw a boy who had stopped speaking, but had not lost the ability to scream and cry when she approached with a needle. She saw a lady with a large hernia resembling an anteater’s snout, which completely disappeared when the patient lay down. She put a plaster cast on a boy’s broken elbow, and diagnosed a lady with TB from a large, swollen foot infection. Oh, and treated the regular malaria cases.

My day was less heroic but just as fun. The plan for today was to finish the dam with small stones and cement. It was an early start, which found us buying cement at 8am, and me being introduced as a builder. Do they know I have no idea what I am doing?

We had a great day, though exhausting and hot, and full of new experiences. After dropping off the cement at the dam site, which is 4 km along an interesting track which the 4x4 finds tough we had to get the sand. So we drove to the dried up river bed and began to dig. After two full loads, the whole of the back of the car full, we needed to get water. The nearest source is about 3km away so back we went, along even more challenging terrain to fill the buckets and cans that we had available.                   Jacob in the pond filling up the water. 

Then we started to mix and start work, though you run out of water quite quickly so we got very familiar with the route to the pond.

The dam is not finished, we got about halfway, as we ran out of small stones, we will return soon.  

Tonight, I can barely stay awake. I am exhausted. We treated ourselves to a square of chocolate and I think are ready for bed.