Building the school

Today was our first day at the school site. So exciting! The foundation is there and the rest in being built.Hundreds of people from the community were there to help build and to meet and watch us. It was a pretty incredible sight. The women were digging, building and doing just as much as the men. The kids helped out by carrying bricks to where they were needed and our OTM team worked our butts off until we were all dying of heat and our muscles were worn out. We're some strong women but we are not used to this kind of physical work and heat! So, I keep saying "we" but my day today was a bit different from everyone else's. I'm still suffering from some kind of heat exhaustion or something and every time I exert too much energy, I get dizzy and need to stop. So, I had to take it easy today. I took all the photos of the site and played with the kids. I did feel kind of lame not helping out with everyone else, but I really was not ok to do much. I had a great time with the kids though. Right when the camera comes out, they are no longer shy and language doesn't matter. They just want to have their pictures taken and then to see themselves on the screen! It is very cute. I fell in love with this girl, Juliet and her friend Abiba. I included a photo of them. Juliet has this smile that lights up and warms everyone around her. There are always so many kids around and they like having us there so it's a good time. It's not like the orphanage which I am still thinking about. These kids have family and community and moms and dads to go home to. You can see in their eyes that they are loved and cared for.
Tonight we have dinner at the hotel and are getting together to process our experience and talk together as a group.
I'm hoping I feel better by tomorrow and can participate in the building. I'm pretty sensitive to extreme heat so I am certainly out of my comort zone here but I'm here and I'm doing it and I just need to take care of myself. I was telling a new friend, Terri, today that I had an image of me doing too much, getting dizzy and collapsing out in the middle of this field with nothing else around... and no doctor or smelling salts or anything to help. That would not have been good. She at least made me laugh by saying someone would probably yell, "Musungu down!" which means "white person down!" That cracked us up so at least we're still finding the humor in the challenging stuff :)
OK, I'm off to relax and enjoy the rest of the night here....