Progress is on the March!

Now that the harvest is complete, work on the Tonto Secondaire Cycle nyegen project is in high gear. I spoke with the three classes and bluntly explained that the American people have just bought them 400,000 francs worth of cement to build them decent latrines, and if they're not going to go to the fields and gather all of the sand, gravel and rocks for free then nobody will, and they will forever be shitting in the bushes. "An be fe ka aw deme, nga ni aw te na barake, aw ba fe ka boke kenema."

Within a week, the Secondaire Cycle student body all took time off their afternoons and weekends to drive their families' donkey carts to the fields, and now we have all the gravel and rocks we could ever need. Still having trouble with the sand somehow...

So now the brickmasons have been able to make more bricks, and the Tonto Youth Association made up of young men in their teens and twenties is providing the bulk of the labor. When I was last at the construction site 48 hours ago, the latrine pit and foundation had been completed. Now we need to build the soak pit, the latrine platforms, and then we can start building the walls of the latrine houses.

Though that's not to say that this project has been bereft of headaches. Our original plan was to build two latrines - one for boys and one for girls. And so I bought two doors - one for the boys' latrine and one for the girls' latrine. But then the Director of the school protested that there wasn't a completely separate latrine for the faculty (himself and two other teachers). So now my masons have acquiesced and have decided that we must be able to build three latrines with the materials purchased to build only two. All of the bricks are already done and made, and we I asked where the 3rd door is going to come from, and they told me "You are going to buy it!" I explained that I've already spent every last penny in project funds and that if they insist on fundamentally changing the project at the last minute then that's fine and dandy but they're going to have to finance all of the amendments out of their own pockets, and they said that they will...

May Allah grant us the will to succeed on this nyegen project!!!

Amiiiina...