Day 3 - Columns and Slabs

The plan was to have a late breakfast and then a short morning working on one or two little jobs. Things didn’t quite go according to plan though; the one or two short jobs taking considerably longer than planned and when it was time to go to lunch there was still half a tonne of concrete on the floor and nowhere for it to go – yet! The boys worked very hard to keep the concrete live, the shuttering was finally laid and the concrete manhandled into place only one hour late.
The scale of the project began to dawn on them when they realised that all that hard work only concreted about 5% of the total area required and I’m probably being generous.

Did I mention that 5 boys joined Mr White and Mr Griffiths and ran the 8km from the hotel to the orphanage. Your narrator arrived in more leisurely fashion with the boys a little later. I get the impression that this won’t be the last time they run and more may volunteer.

In the afternoon we visited the USA River Academy, a local boarding school where 16 of the children from the orphanage are students on sponsored places. The boys had the most amazing experience; the children were so friendly and two hours passed by in moments as we went on a tour of the grounds. Everywhere we went the children followed us, played with us and were eager to use everyone’s camera. Within 30 seconds of leaving the bus the boys had all had their cameras wrenched from their hands. It was wonderful to see everyone enjoying themselves so much, not only the students but the Harrow boys too, many of whom had a child on their shoulders for most of the afternoon.

In the end our departure was delayed as we had to remove 20 small children who had decided to jump on the bus with us.