Building Walls part 2 of 2

And with that, we were ready to get to work. Our job was to build a fifty-foot long wall on the fourth, open side of the school courtyard so as to separate it from the main pathway that was immediately adjacent to it. We started by digging a long trench twelve inches deep. While some of our students used the pick axes to dig the trench, others started hauling large bags of cement up from the storage shed at the bottom of the hill. Several of our boys were taking turns using the sledge hammer to break old pieces of concrete into smaller pieces of concrete that would be used as fill for the foundation.

Many of the local kids jumped in and made themselves useful. In fact, long after my eighth-graders were wiped out from working in the Indonesian heat, the local seven-year-old girls were still going strong hauling buckets of cement.

If you don’t believe in guardian angels that’s only because you haven’t been part of a service project where 18 eighth-graders and twice that many local kids are shoveling, swinging pick axes, and breaking up cement with a sledge hammer in a confined area.

I must confess that leading up to our trip, I was a little concerned about just how hard our kids would work considering that yard work, housework, and low-paying summer jobs are not a part of the growing-up experience in Hong Kong. But I was pleasantly surprised; our kids threw themselves into the work at hand. Unfortunately, by the time noon rolled around and it was time for us to begin packing up, we had only finished pouring the foundation. The pile of blocks that we had hauled and stacked lay untouched. The actual building of the wall would have to be done by the locals or by a future work group.

While a few of us rinsed cement off the shovels and packed up, most of our kids made their way onto the dirt volleyball court that was the courtyard. It was one mass jumble of our kids and the local kids. Some were playing tag, some were playing soccer. A few of the local girls were playing jacks using seashells. One of the staff members from Telunas tossed a Frisbee into the mix and some of our students were trying to teach the fine art of Frisbee throwing to a few local kids who I was told had probably never played Frisbee before.

And with that it was time to wrap it up. In the center of the courtyard, I organized my kids for our daily group photo. We had a hard time keeping the local kids out of the picture, they were so anxious to join in. After I got my picture of our students, we finally waved in the local kids and got a joint picture. We packed up all our equipment, but instead of walking directly to the boat we took the long circuitous route so that we could see a little more of the village and the countryside. We were followed by our own entourage of local kids.

They were sad to see us go, because now that we had left, their teachers were going to insist that school was back in session for the remainder of the afternoon.