Today our work began on our two babies cottages at Children's Village! We headed off early out towards the project site, and were excited to roll up and see the two buildings built from the donations of our wonderful supporters.
A special reception awaited us - four of the two year olds from the cottages built last year, trotted out to wait for us in a line, and were full of smiles, waves and the familiar catch cry of "Auntie, auntie!". After some time getting to know the little ones in each cottage, we moved over to the new buildings and began our work.
The locals had already finished most of the construction work on the two houses, and our first task was painting the outside of both, and inside of some rooms with whitewash. We had the fun of climbing local scaffolding made of bamboo and rope, with an eager group of workers holding us steady as we climbed.
Christine, Meredith, Megan and Shelley made it all the way on to the concrete roof of the cottages to paint, while the rest of the gang worked on scaffolding or at ground level painting the walls.
The scenery here is just stunning - views of the lake, mountains and coconut groves, and a lovely breeze kept us from overheating in the midday sun.
At 12.30 pm we broke for lunch, and the house mothers had prepared an amazing feast that we could not do justice to. Fortunately with 28 kids already in residence in the completed cottages, there would be plenty of hungry mouths that night to finish the leftovers!
After a leisurely lunch, we played with the kids some more, while some of our group chatted to the local workers. After exchanging names, one of the men asked who of our group was still single, and after learning at least two of our women were still on the market, made a great show of preening himself and hoping for the best!
Our foreman told us they had not expected that we would work so hard and fast, and by the time we had finished the second set of whitewashing, they had come up with more plans for other work for us for the rest of the week - laying foundations, rendering (plastering) the brick walls and doing the final coat of whitewash.
After a good day's work, we headed back into Madurai and had a quick clean up at the hotel before heading out to shop. After several days in the country, everyone wanted the opportunity to buy material for a salwar kameez, one of the local dress costumes, to wear out at night over the coming week.
Our trusty driver, Vira, took us to a great store in town, and we all bought salwar kameez sets and some of the girls bought cloth by the metre. Madurai is famous for its cotton - exported by the British for years under the name Madras Cotton. Cotton and silk that would sell for $10 to $50 a metre at home was only $1 to $2 a metre here.
After completing our purchases we headed back to the hotel for dinner on the rooftop again, and fireworks across the city.
