Day 1 Morning (Feb 8) At Chahalka Village

Not a good start to the day - I'd set my watch but was off by 1.5 hours - so there was a big scramble to get ready in time to meet the bus. We had breakfast, Indian style at Sanjiv'v farm (as we now call it) - eggs, coffee and a special bread that was very good.

As we drove in our vans to the village, my first impression of Chahalka is - poverty is unbelievable yet people seem happy enough. Our first task was to start a brick line to move a four foot high pile of bricks to the location of the first wall. Our mason began laying the mortar and bricks.

We have these projects to complete:
1. Paint the Learning Centre inside and out
2. Paint the outside of the Day Care
3. Paint a mural on the inside of the Day Care
4. Construct 4 foot high walls outside the Learning Centre and Day Care
5. Construct a water trough for the water buffalo (to keep them outside the school yard)

All day, people from the village, elder, young men, teenagers and children came by to watch us. We sing songs and they laugh. To have some fun with the children, Mark Little started playing "Patty Cake" with the children - they laughed heartily and tried their best to play.

At one point, while laying brick with the mason, a group of young people came up to us - likely the oldest was 12. The tallest girl began singing "A-B-C-D". I jumped right in and along with her. We did that several times. It was fun and she kept coming back throughout the day. While quite shy, she was very interested in us as were her friends.

While the painting was going on inside and the bricks were getting laid, children would get in our way. The elders would yell angrily at them and they would scatters. Minutes later they were back again watching and observing us work.

The people of the village watched as we passed the bricks in the line and laid more and more wall. We'd encourage the young people to step in and help. They would shy away but some would very gingerly help.

As the rows of the wall grew higher, we'd encourage the teenagers to lay bricks - we wanted them to feel a sense of ownership and pride in helping their village. Many did but we also found it most interesting to watch their reaction when we asked them to help. A couple of the young men toook right to it and stayed a long time helping.

While others went back to the farm for lunch, four of us remained behind and used all the mortar before going for lunch.

Lunch was curried potatoes, rice, chicken vegetarian soup and chick pea balls with sauce. Every day we had beer for lunch.

Several people lead by Tom and Shirley stayed behind to sort the tremendous number of gifts brought by team members. In the end, there were nearly 20,000 items.