Building a house for Ly

Construction of new houses is in hyper mode all over the village. As we race to beat the rain, people spend hours every day pulling water from the well, lugging mud from a pit to the house, carrying dried mud bricks and drinking endless amounts of tea.

A typical day of construction includes the slaughtering of a goat and the preparing of several kilos of rice to feed all the volunteers. People show up with their work clothes and faces on, and chug through the physically demanding labor until exhausted. Tiny shots of sugary tea keep them fueled, but the hot sun prevents much work from happening after noon or one.

Late night excursions to the well use up any energy one has managed to store throughout the day. Moonlight isn't nearly as hot as sunlight, but as the Pulaar people say, the ground is never even at night, and with a bucket of water sloshing on one's head, it makes this exhausted American girl yearn for some of those nifty construction machines that she's seen in the past...