Day 13 (May 31)

Contributed by: Berai

Huge! Unimaginable! Says, David at the completion of the first day of construction on the water plaza design when I asked him what he thinks. It was indeed huge and unimaginable, but it wasn't easy. I myself wasn't involved with the construction of the 30ftx12ftx14ft canopy foundation, but I did witness something incredible.

The beginning of the day started off meeting with the six people chosen to be our core helpers with both the water plaza and solar power for the school along with an entire sleuth of others ready and willing to help us with the task at hand. The dimensions were setup using local wood and string to ensure that as the 14 foot posts were hoisted into the air they would be straight, level, and structurally sound or panga (“strong” in Fra-Fra). After the meeting Jared, Matt, and David headed to Bolgatonga for more supplies and the rest of us stayed behind in Yua helping where needed. The men and Olivia started work on digging the footers while Dani and I went with women to fetch water. Let me tell you, fetching water is not an easy task and requires a lot of strength. Dani and I tried putting the large basins of water on our heads, however, we couldn't keep them on long because they were extremely heavy and could have squished our necks. Dani did carry a smaller of bucket of water on her head for about 1km and she was exhausted by the end. Lesson learned: never underestimate the energy required to fetch water.

As the day progressed the men and Olivia kept working on the water plaza design while waiting for Jared, Matt and David to return with the “goods” from Bolga. Then finally the guys returned from Bolga with the gigantic polytank, 160 cement blocks, and tons o' wood. There was a battery crisis for a moment and if you saw John Campbell's face you may have thought the world was going to end. The crisis ended when the batteries arrived, well it almost ended since the batteries were gone and the “goods” didn't arrive until a couple of hours before sundown,so everyone was nervous that the six 14 foot posts would not be up before daylight was lost. Getting the posts up before the next day was crucial because if not it would set us back a day and we don't want to be behind.

Now, this is where amazing happens. Everyone: EWB, Medical Hands For Healing, and the community of Yua became one unit and worked as fast as possible to get cement ready for mixing, posts in the right position, rebar cages fabricated, and getting the security posts ready in the amount of sunlight left. But naturally, the sun went down and we only had one post hoisted in cement. Instead of stopping we pulled up the two vans and used the headlights. Everyone kept on working at rapid speed to finish (even though as Jared pointed out the sun is down there is no rush anymore), but everyone kept working calling out “mallet”, “nail it in” and John Campbell climbing up on Joseph's (one of the six picked to work with us) shoulders to nail in the security boards I honestly wish that everyone could have been there to see how amazing everyone worked together, it was one of the most incredible things I've seen happen between a group of people. Amazing.