PUC meets Murphy's Law

Guys, if there was ever a day to test the mettle of our PUC Tanzania team it was today. Today, we got a nice taste of Murphy's law or, for you laymen that don't know what that means, the idea that "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong".

We started our day extremely well, as the team got to take videos of the kids saying thank you to all of our generous donors (stay tuned for those videos!)! After, we had a community survey with the 6th grade class about their sanitation habits which was very enlightening.

However, it was all downhill from there.

To begin with, the weather today was extremely sunny and, while it was refreshing at first, began to beat down hard on us as the day went on. Some of us began to even ask for the dampy, rainy weather to come back!

Also, the electricity went out which meant the steelworkers couldn't weld the bars for our tippy taps for several hours (almost half the day). The cured wood for our roof trusses finally came in as well, but the carpenters had not begun to work on creating the truss as everyone was finishing the top of the structure.

The team bided their time by hanging out with the kids for the majority of the day. The language barrier was somewhat difficult at first, but little by little we began to understand each other a bit more. Some of the members of the team would spend their time trying to hit mangos off the tree. I personally got beat with a stick by the girl second to the right in the picture below.

After what felt like hours (because it was, actually, hours) we decided that we could not be of any more use that day and were ready to head home for dinner. In an unfortunate turn of events, however, we discovered the machine used to pump the water out of the septic tank was broken and could not be fixed that day, essentially wasting everyone's day and leaving us behind schedule.

When we finally said good riddance to the day and drove home, our van broke down. Mohamed stayed with the car while we had to take a less than ideal way home with a dolla-dolla (a taxi/van). Dinner was pretty great, though, as Safia made us french fries (probably because she heard us complaining about how much we miss cheeseburgers and fries).

I'd like to say we're ending the day on a good note, but I'm worried that as soon as I say that I'll get attacked by a swarm of mosquitos.

SWAHILI PHRASE OF THE DAY:

Tu ta o nana keshew: See you tomorrow!