7/16/10 Birthday

I turned 23 today! I decided to spend it doing manual labor for the first time in my life haha. My day started out with Melody leaving me the sweetest post-it notes and letter, one of the nicest anyone has ever written me! She also got me a beautiful necklace from a local shop and my favorite chai tea brand..sooo incredibly thoughtful and sweet. There is a clinic in Roche which is 28km away from Shirati. The Village Life Project has been working on building a new health care clinic which will serve the remote area. Our friends Emily, Richard, and Bryant have been working up there to build this clinic with local workers. Melody and I spent the first part of the day measuring where gravel and dirt would be poured then we were put in charge of hammering mud bricks to break them down into gravel sized pieces. I admit that was pretty fun destroying bricks but I soon realized that I had 2 blisters on my hand and managed to cut myself against a rusty metal post (good thing I got that tetanus booster just a bit ago). The best part of the day was when we got to go to a water committee meeting. We got to meet with members of the village while Bryant led the meeting on how the water system would be created at the clinic using rain and well water that would be collected in tanks and then a solar panel would heat up water. The system definitely seems environmental as well as great for limited resources in the area. The committee also talked about how they started teaching village residents of Roche how to use a slow sand filter that was introduced by Village Life. Its really fascinating since muddy and dirty water would be poured through layers of sand and the protozoa in it would destroy harmful bacteria as well as sift out the mud to create “maji salama” or clean water. I definitely learned a lot today and have a whole new appreciation of construction work and manual labor. When we got back to Shirati, it was really sweet, my translators got me small gifts. Enock got me this awesome bracelet that has woven into it the colors of the Tanzania flag. The green stands for vegetation, gold for the mineral wealth, black for the people, and blue for the adjoining sea. A few people went with me for some chai tea at the local bar then headed to drink at the Freedom bar afterwards. I’m a fan of $1 Tanzanian beer and $2 flask of Conyagi which is a Tanzanian hard liquor that tastes like rum. All in all, I had a great birthday celebration from the construction site, meeting, friends, and night.