Tuesday 18th May 2010

Tuesday is construction day for everyone.
Ray had a computer class before he went back to his garden.

I was relegated to the chook pen. I had to clean all the pooh out and replace the nesting boxes with clean straw, which I had to collect myself from a nearby field.
Tomorrow Ray said he will cut me some more dry grass from the garden. It is really hot, hard work and it seemed to go nowhere because there are quite a few nesting boxes.
It´s a great chook shed, as chook sheds go, made from the mud bricks so common around here. The chickens are funny looking things with fluffy heads and feet and scrawný bald necks. They are new and not laying very well yet. The last lot were eating their own eggs, so they became dinner. It´s a tough world.

In the afternoon some of us were asigned to community work. We were taken to a small village further up the valley to help rebuild a house that was washed away in the recent floods. The damaged mud brick walls have to be broken down and the mud bricks crushed to be reused to make the 3,000 mud bricks needed for rebuilding.
Ray and three of the boys were assigned to crushing bricks while Vickey and I went to the women´s workshop (Talleres) where the women meet and make crafts for sale.

This group mainly knits hats and scarves. Our job is to take the roll and to record material going out and products coming in for sale. We keep these records so that the women get paid for the work they produce, but the meeting is also to encourage them to spend time together which they don´t otherwise get the opportunity to do as they work all the time in the fields. The social worker also takes the opportunity during these meetings to lecture the women about hygiene and the importance of not feeding their families food that is tainted.

These meetings are a far cry from our sewing circle back home.