Okay, so things are still going great here in Bauchi. We have heard from the other teams that they are doing great, and tomorrow both the other teams will be traveling to meet us, along with Wes and Janice, and we will be pouring the concrete for the foundation of the children’s hospital. Yesterday, the group spent a few hours with the villagers collecting rocks along the country side to add to the cement, today, we have to smash those rocks to smaller pieces. It’s pretty crazy how much work goes into construction here, the work that took us 4 hours to do yesterday could easily be done in 15 minutes by a machine in Canada. It was great to get together with the villagers and start construction. We are finding that it is hard for our team to actually do hard labor here. The men in the villages want to work so much that they usually end up trying to take all the work from us, haha. We’re learning how to work together and when we aren’t doing labor, we’re spending countless hours with the children, which is a lot of work in itself!
Again, it’s amazing to see how receptive the children are to us here. We’ve been told by our guides that children in this culture are often pushed aside, so when an adult takes the time to engage them, it means the world. Yesterday we spent a few hours in another village singing songs under a tree, as well as playing soccer in a field we have names the “Widow maker”, due to the holes and bumps all along the playing surface.
A few days ago we we’re invited to a wonderful feast in a village, a family had prepared a spectacular meal for us. After the meal we had a chance to meet the elder of the village, a man who was responsible for the village as a whole. It was a very surreal experience, we all sat on mats outside his hut as our translater told us how happy the man was to have us there, definetly felt like something out of a movie.

After we work at the hospital site a bit more today we have decided to go on a hike. There are lots of large hills and mountains here so the group has decided to go on an adventure. Don’t worry though, the only animals we have encountered so far have been scorpions and snakes…so nothing to worry about..lol. But seriously, neither was poisonous, and our guides are good at keeping us out of trouble.

So that’s it for now, I’m trying to get some more photos and video’s up, but the internet is pretty slow here, hopefully we can get some stuff up for you to see.
Keep checking back, thanks for all your comments!!