My daughter returned home from Africa about a week ago and she's been uploading and editing her pictures ever since. She took almost 3000 pictures!
One of the projects they worked on while in Kenya was to help a widow enlarge the size of her house. Many of the people in Kenya are displaced because of war, and there are many widows and orphans. Most of these kids are orphaned because of HIV-AIDS. Anyway, most families occupy a house (really, a shack) that is 10 feet by 15 feet. Can you imagine? Sometimes there are 5 people in a house. And if there are teenaged boys in the home, they need to have their own room. It is not acceptable in their culture for teenaged boys to sleep with the rest of the family.
Enlarging this shack required bamboo, logs and mortar. The mortar was a mixture of black dirt, water, and cow dung. And how was this mixed? With their feet.
And here's the final result:
They doubled the size of her house, giving her a room for the teenaged boys to sleep, and they also gave her a covered cooking area, which is located outside. Now she doesn't have to cook in the rain. Makes me appreciate what I have!
this actually isn't the finished house! We finished the kitchen area by building walls and mudding them, too.
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