So it appears to be official, 150 bags of concrete arrived last night from Puerto Cabezas and it looks like Jeff has every intention of starting work on the second floor of the dorm/classroom building this week if not today. Once again I'm fearful of the work on this dorm building will eclipse the work that this trip was intended to accomplish; medical clinics and gaining useful experience and skills. If I was a missionary who paid money to come here, I would be perfectly happy with doing whatever was asked of me to further the mission here. However, I am not a missionary, I paid to come here as a student taking a certain amount of credit hours and getting an education out of the deal not to do manual labor.
So far we have a schedule of when class were supposed to begin, last Tuesday to be exact.
Update: I wrote the above this morning when I was frustrated by seeing the 150 bags of concrete sitting on the back of the deuce. Today the girls went to the clinic while the menfolk unloaded the 15,000 pounds of concrete from the truck, apparently gender equality has its limits. After that we worked a little on squaring lumber for the building site and moving them closer to the construction site. Its amazing how a task which would probably take 30 minutes in the states can take 2 hours because of the horrendous heat here. Its literally 10 minutes working in the sun and 10 minutes recovering in the shade. Its funny because after several hours in the sun you get really tired and think you've worked really hard so when meal time comes around your body tricks you into thinking you need more food. For lunch today I got way too much food, apparently I hadn't worked as hard as I thought I had.
Today we also asked Jeff to set up a meeting tonight with the group to bring us all up to speed on what was going on. Some of us made up a list of questions that covered our concerns over what had happened so far. In the meeting Jeff gave us all syllabi for the classes so that took care of the concern about classes, he also cleared things up about the building project. The word is that we are going to be working on it every Wednesday which was originally meant to be a project day anyways. Right now we are trying to work it out so that some of us can do development projects in the community instead of working on the dorm building.
Over all it was a positive thing that maybe should have happened several days ago. I am very thankful that it happened today and that it went much smoother than I had feared it would.
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