With a start around 6 o’clock, woken by sunrise in the village long rooms and a relaxing breakfast overlooking the waking nature of the Mekong Delta, today was our first day of construction. We travelled by boat to the construction site where working in the heat slowly began to take its toll. With a team of brick layers and a team of cement mixers, by 11 o’clock we had half the walls in the house done. Tired and exhausted from the humidity we headed next door to a host family for lunch. They invited us into their home to enjoy a delicious meal and relax for a couple of hours. Despite the constant worry of being fed fried frogs, we got to indulge into a fantastic lunch of the average Vietnamese meal and the newly discovered fried pumpkin flowers.
After our lunch and well earned chill time we headed back to the site to finish our day’s work, reaching well past what was expected. As the cement team started shovelling and mixing faster, the brick laying team started to pick up speed and skill and before we knew it we had teams of 2 up on small scaffolds laying bricks that were out of arm’s reach.
We all worked together and became a very effective group of builders. We were all eager to get back to the village to jump into the showers. After fighting over shower orders and getting all the dirt and cement off ourselves we spent our wind down time before dinner playing cards and games together. We had a new assortment of dishes for dinner, including fried quail eggs and Vietnamese pancakes. After dinner we had a brief circle time to reflect on the hard day’s work and prepare us for another busy day to come.
By Ella C and Darci W