In October 2005 a group of 19 students went up to the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro to the village of Materuni to help rebuild a collapsed classroom.
Tents, sleeping bags, lifting heavy loads, shovelling sand and cement, digging and brick making were all on the Five Star menu. While we were packing pick axes, buckets and shovels into the school's lorry we realised that Sandra Riches, CAS Co-ordinator, was coming with her own car and not with us on the lorry. The student body of this trip decided that there was something highly wrong with that and demanded an explanation. Guess what her answer was? "I will go back home this afternoon to have a nice shower, and sleep in my own bed while you will be stuck sleeping on hard ground feeling absolutely filthy with cement and dust stuck onto you. No, there is no shower or river to even rinse your feet. Oh, and I want fried eggs, sausages and baked beans for breakfast!" He he, yeah as if, she's joking right? Well, see for yourself…
After having had a nice Friday afternoon playing with the children of Materuni, whose classroom we were to rebuild, we thought that the trip wasn't going to be so hard after all… What can I say? Self deception always helps build one's hopes up….
Saturday morning we were woken up at 6.30 to make breakfast, eat, and go to work. Some of us went to make bricks, which involves a lot of shovelling and real art if you don't want them to break every five minutes; while the rest of us went on digging the foundations. No easy job when you have big rocks to remove and broken cement to dig through. It went on like that with endless efforts and good team work until lunch time, after which we all felt like we had worked so well we ought to have the afternoon free…we could dream on… We went on with making bricks and mixing cement; this means for 50 kg of cement 25 buckets of sand and buckets and buckets of water. Mixing it to the left then mixing it to the right, separating it, adding water mixing as fast as possible, adding more water, mixing it to the left and to the right, then putting it into big 'plates' called karai, and down the line it went into our foundations as fast as possible. Hours after, we could still hear the shouts more karai, karai, karai echoing in our heads. All of that hard work while Sandra was happily taking pictures, giving us orders and distributing an occasional 'well done'!
It went on like that at high speed until 5.30 in the afternoon, by which time we were knackered and couldn't even lift our own arms anymore. We were grey from head to toe, and felt as old as we looked! That night we were all in bed before ten o'clock. Not even one of us tried to grill the curfew! Can you imagine that from a group of 16 to 20 year olds? Something must have been very wrong!
Sunday morning we were woken up again at the same time, breakfast, and back to work! This time we had to make bricks and more bricks.
In the end we had made 195 bricks, with only about 600 more to do to be able to finish the classroom… Foundations were dug as deep as 1.45 m due to the steep slopes and heavy rains and were filled with rocks and cement.
We finished by 11.45, packed as fast and possible, and all slumped into our seats lying on each others laps and heads falling on each others shoulders.
However tired and dirty we were, we all felt it was a job well done!!!!!!
A huge thanks to Mr Aggarwal of Building and General for the kind loan of their block making machine, once again!!!!!
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