Monday June 2 - back to Karatu & Banjika

 What’s up everyone! It’s Becks and EShap (Sam and Ethan) in the house. 

Last night was our last night in a hotel until our final night in Tanzania. Breakfast was later today (not 5 am), at 8:15, with another amazing hotel buffet filled with egg, crepes, sausage, and toast. After breakfast, we got on the bus to make our way back to Karatu. The bus ride was filled with music, friendship bracelet making, and sleeping. After around an hour and a half, we stopped at the Lion Café to by some coffee and pastries, which we brought and ate during the rest of the bus ride. When we arrived at school around 1 pm, we had lunch with our homestay siblings, who we haven’t seen for a few days. After lunch we had some time to play football (soccer) and football. After lunch we walked to a brick making quarry, where they taught us how all the bricks for building were made (lots of the houses here are made of brick). The activity was super hands on and everyone got their hands very dirty. We sifted dirt, shoveled mud, and made bets on who would jump in the disgusting, muddy lake (no one did). We had our afternoon snack at Banjika after five rounds of hand washing. Now we’re going home and getting a good night’s sleep at our homestay!

saw some baboons on the side of the road during our drive back to Karatu, which was cool. We also saw two elephants (but they did not really cooperate for pictures)

the brick quarry, five mins from school

we moved and stacked a lot of bricks

      

we beat the earth to help make the clay softer and to be able to sift out the rocks

another round of moving and stacking bricks

finally, we got to make bricks

    

we shoveled the wet clay into a tray, carried it up to a flat area, flipped the clay over and smoothed it out. Each tray carried two large bricks 

it was hands on work

        

many of the villagers are involved in the brick-making work.