walls

Mahatalaky CEG under construction. This is one of my daily shots showing the progress of the building work.

The grey sky is a sign of the rainy season, just starting. Our works hours, days even, began to get short and broken from here on. We still had hours of baking heat under bright sun, but the early mornings were grey and the late afternoons wet, with thunder and lightning crashing on the hills in the distance.

The big blue barrels on the left of the photo were our water barrels - for construction not drinking. With all the concrete and grout we were mixing we needed a lot of water. All of which had to be carried up the hill from the pump. Occasionally we had help from some of the school kids, who would put us to shame: the gossiping and giggling girls merrily carried buckets of water on their heads, up the hill - and went back for more.

Less than two weeks earlier, the school looked like this.