Incarnation Cameroon Mission: The Wall

Normally, I'm more into building bridges, not walls but today a wall was in the cards. The morning started off with breakfast at 6:30am. The hotel has a nice buffet spread with sausage, chicken, boiled eggs, cereal, cheese and plenty or french pastries. The croissants in particular were crowd-pleasers. After "le petit dejeuner" we all loaded into three taxis and ventured off for our first real day of work.

When we arrived at the house we got right to work. The priorities of the day were to start raising the outside wall and to build a wall on the interior of the house, between the living room and what would be the dining area. Since we want to use the space in the house as efficiently as possible, we decided to turn the dining room into another bedroom, which will likely fit an additional 3 bunk beds. Just after we broke ground on the wall, a small group left for the store to get supplies.

I was in the group that headed to a big store lot called "Jacos" where they had all sorts of construction and painting supplies. It was very similar to a Home Depot back home. With our list in hand, Jake, Caroline and I began our Jacos scavenger hunt. For each item we had to talk to a different person behind a different desk. It was really awesome to have Caroline to help us find everything and communicate with the folks that worked there. I got a chance to use my french as well and Caroline made me practice all my numbers.

Mary in the front, Abby in the back.

While we were busy shopping around town, everyone back at the house was stirring mortar and slabbing cinder-blocks on top of one another. The challenge of the day was that the inside wall we were building was under a walkway that was the shape of an arc. If you know how a cinder-block is shaped, it is definitely not arched. Tim took the lead on shaping the cinder blocks to fit across and along the edges. Rachel, Mike, Connie and Shelia seemed to be the steady team of architects on the wall. I did my best attempt at a sequence of photos showing the progress:

Left is Tim, right is Mike

In addition to the beautiful inside wall, we also increased the height of the outside wall. Don and Stefan took the lead with help from Max, Donald, Felix and Gerard. Here are some highlight photos from their exciting adventures:

In addition to the walls, we also prepped the bedrooms for paint tomorrow and dug a trench for a new water line. We were pretty ambitious for the first day and were able to accomplish it all! We were definitely beat by the end of the day. Next up for tomorrow is the second interior wall (with a door frame for an added challenge) and getting started on the painting. Good thing we are getting some rest...