On Day Eight of our time in Freetown, we have gotten three quarters of the main retaining wall done. This may seem like slow progress, but when you realize that there is a 10 minute uphill hike from where the road ends at the football field, through a village to the building site and there are no cement mixers or excavators, we are doing pretty good. All materials (sand, cement, rebar, tools) have to be carried these 1000 steps upward to the school site. All the rocks used in the cement mix are broken by hand by local workers and the cement is mixed and pored into the footings by hand. Every bit of dirt moved to make way for forms or to back fill is dug out by pick axes and carried by shovels and pans.
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| Volunteers moving rocks towards the project site. |
The work is hard, but it is so rewarding to know that we are helping make the way for better education for many underprivileged children. Every day, both on the way to the way to the job site and down again at the end of the day, villagers of the George Brook community come out and make a point of greeting us and thanking us. And those beautiful children call out and come running to say hello. I'm so thankful for this opportunity.
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| Team Leader Tim Kasten taking a break with some local kids. |
Teresa Schmidt
DWC Volunteer Participant
Sierra Leone: April 2014
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