May 12th: Worry not, worry not!

Worry not, worry not! Brendan and Eric were much better in the morning- good enough to come to work and not even feel sick at the work site! Unfortunately, Hilda still was a little feverish and had a pounding headache this morning, so she stayed home for a second day of rest. I left her a mobile and called frequently throughout the work day. Thankfully, after lots of rehydration salts, juice, Tylenol and rest she fully recuperated after today and was at the beach in the afternoon back to normal! I think that the main issue with those who have fallen ill is just the heat. It is unbearable- May is the hottest month of the entire year in Sri Lanka!

Work today for the temple group was really good. They managed to pour lots of concrete and have the wall on its way! The Trades Training Facility(TTF) group was uniformly tired today and didn’t have a very busy work day. But, our exhaustion was complemented by a relative lack of work required on our part, as we are at the stage of waiting for the masons to build the rock walls in the foundations we have dug. All we need to be doing during this stage of the project is mixing cement and moving rocks to the sides of the trenches for the masons to break and position appropriately. I am very happy with the organization of the trip to date from the perspective of our worksites. Anil and Ruwan are amazing at simultaneously organizing the group’s volunteer and tourist facets of the trip, and there hasn’t been a day (and isn’t a day in the foreseeable future) when either the temple or the TTF group has had to wait around for materials or workers. They are amazingly committed to their jobs! Today, they presented to me a great itinerary for our 8 day cultural tour, and they will go ahead with bookings for hotel/guest house rooms tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we will be branching out and mixing up the groups a little- the TTF group will split up into two groups of 4, one of which will work at the temple and the other at a house in construction nearby the temple (currently at the plastering phase). The previous temple group will all head to the TTF to meet the workers and continue our progress over there. I’m just so happy that everyone is feeling better! We have learned the lesson of respect for the sun and heat very early on, and I hope that the group will be sure to take more frequent breaks at the worksite and not over do it, falling into another miserable heat stroke-ish slump.