Thursday, May 6, 2010

Toilets & Showers

When the team from Calvary came this month we were still using these toilet and shower tents.
The toilet is just a hole in the ground with a fancy seat over it with a plastic tent around the hole (yellow tent on right). The shower tent has a bag of water tied up in a tree over the tent. (green tent on left)

So you can imagine how excited we were at the prospect of having real toilets and showers. The day after we set up camp the guys began by leveling a foundation for a concrete pad in the pavilion.
Here you see two drain pipes. There will be two toilets, one on each side of the pavilion. The toilet / shower areas are back to back.


Then it was time to pour the concrete.
The guys mixed the concrete by hand in a large pile on the ground just outside this area.
And after it was poured, they smoothed the surface. Hard work! But they did a fantastic job!


When they were finished this is what we had!!! Isn't it beautiful!?


This is a picture of the trench that was dug for the pipe
to the septic tank. This had to be leveled and then filled with dirt.




Work on the showers. The guys built a wooden frame to pour a drain.
They had to be very creative and come up with ways to make things work without a trip to Lowes, Home Depot or WalMart! Great job guys!





The shower area. Again, two showers, one on the left, one on the right. The wall in the center is yet to be built. If you can see it, there are boards mounted in the corners for mounting the shower fixtures. The floors will be smooth, flat river rock from the Zambezi.

To build the shower walls the rocks we used had to be washed so the mortar would stick. So one afternoon we had a "rock washing party."

Thank you Mark, Wendell, and David for coming and working so hard. We are grateful to the Lord for a really practical gift of grace. We are also thankful to all of our family in the body of Christ that supported these guys so they could come. - Stephanie
Here are a few pictures of different critters we saw this last trip out to the bush.
Isn't God creative?

These first three pictures are of a the biggest walking stick any of us had ever seen!


It was feeling threatened and flared out it's WINGS!
It made it look like a stick from a tree with leaves!
Incredible! It was almost a foot long!




A brilliant butterfly.


A very large millipede. We see these a lot.
When they crawl on our tent roof at night they are very loud!



A very large spider in the grass we were unloading for our thatch roof.
Can you see it?




Another very large spider!



Ok, so this one is a little gross.
But we sure are having some great science lessons first hand!
This is a pile of dung left by an elephant.
The first ones to arrive on the scene are butterflies and dung beetles.