Day 8: Limestone is good for your nails

Today, Daniel, Asa, and I got the opportunity to actually go out and make the materials that we work with in construction. We got to make limestone mortar that is used for brickwork, and we got to saw and shave wood.  Making limestone mortar is really labor-intensive work. To start we had to shovel limestone sand into a shifter and shift it, then that sand is put into a trough filled with limestone paste. Shifting the sand was such a workout for my core. We then had to smush and mix the two together. If I don’t get big guns by the end of this trip I’m gonna be pretty mad.

            At the wood workshop we got to cut and shave the wood planks that would be used in the house. It was really crazy because some of the pieces of wood were so long that it took me, Daniel, Asa, and Keniel to hold it to be cut. I cannot imagine how one person would do that by themselves. The last part of the wood making process was shaving the wood. The shaving machine was called the “thicknesser” and let out a lot of wood shavings and noise.

            I really think that its crazy that so much work has to be done in order to get the materials we use to build. It’s like you are constructing the construction if that makes sense. It was so much fun, even though it was really hard. I’d love to do that again.

            The second half of the day was filled with paint. We continued to paint the second floor of the house, but we had some visitors. Two kids, Renique and Trevin. Renique is a seven year old girl who loves reading, Rapunzel, and painting. She helped us paint, but she always forgot that the paint was wet, so she kept touching it. She was so cute. Trevin is the son of one of the workers and is in 7^th grade. Trevin has visited before; he really likes hanging with us. Trevin loves math and is in marching band. Logan said that next year we would bring his guitar and teach him how to play. It was really cool to meet some Jamaican youths.