Day 18

July 12
Today was actually a very interesting day. We started the day with community service at the secondary school. We were working on building the tables today, but we reached a small glitch when we realized that the people we were relying on to tell us what to do actually had no idea what they were doing. Yes, even the man known as "The Architect" proposed a ridiculous method. His proposed method of table-making was not working out because he decided that it would be a great idea to create a mold for the table before filling said mold with concrete. We all agreed that this would be a good idea, so we looked to him to make the mold. He goes away briefly, and returns with a sheet metal sign. Sheet metal. He then proceeds to bend it and cut it with no difficulty. It did not occur to him that if he could bend it with such ease, clearly the concrete would have no problems doing the same thing. Not only did it bend easily, but when he put the mold together, there were gaps in the mold. When we pointed this out to the Architect, he decided to fix the problem with a piece of wire. A thin strand of wire. What??? Well, sure enough, a mold of flimsy sheet metal was not enough to hold up that amount of concrete. We watched the mold visibly expand while concrete seeped out the sides. It was a mess, but probably the funniest mess I've ever seen.

Our sheet metal mold. Yes, they put concrete in this.

We finally convinced the men we were working with that we needed to build the base out of bricks, and nothing else. They were looking longingly at the pile of cinder blocks not too far away. I really hope they don't touch those. Anyway, we didn't have enough bricks left over from the benches to use for the foundation. We have to wait for more bricks to be shipped to the school. Because we didn't have enough bricks, we got to end service early today.
After lunch, I got a great surprise. Dipapata!! That's right, I got to help cook dipapata! For those of you who don't know, dipapata are little bread rolls that are basically perfect in every which way. We had a huge tub of dough, some flour, and our hands. We used the lid of a cast iron cauldron, and set that outside on two cinder blocks. Underneath the lid, we put smouldering logs to cook the dipapata at a nice pace. Sadly, I had to leave before they were finished, but I had some when I came back. YUM!!!! I sure do love dipapata!!

The big bowl of dipapata dough

I left my cooking dipapata for a group meeting. As we are leaving the homestay in 7 days, and the farewell dinner is in 6 days, we needed to start preparing our farewell skit. So far, it seems a little iffy, but hopefully, within the next 6 days, it will all work out. We had our meeting at Olivia's house, and whaddya know, she has a flat screen TV with cable in her house. We were so excited to see cable again, so we watched music videos on Africa's version of MTV. It was great. It was a nice respite from the daily grind.

Me, Rheame, Shane, and Thomas sitting on the couch at Olivia's house

After tonight's Generations at home, I went with Refilwe and Rorisang to watch The Incredible Hulk. We stopped at 10 PM because we were all falling asleep, but it's a fun movie. I'm actually about to crash. I had a restless night last night. I woke up at 1 AM to use the bathroom, and I was too cold to fall back asleep until 4 AM. It was rough. Hopefully, tonight is better! (I made sure to use the bathroom right before bed this time!)
:)