Day Two

Digging is hard. I can only do it for about seven minutes with intensity. After that, I have to rest and catch my breath. Maybe for two minutes. Digging was my world over the four and a half hours we were at our work site. The location is a vacant lot agancent to an existing brick house. We were supposed to tear down a thatch shack and replace it with a brick building, but there was some problem with the home-owner’s participation in the project. So we trekked over to another location, through streets of mud and sewage, between throngs of children practicing their Hi’s and Bye’s. I can’t quite wrap my head around what I saw. It’s less heartbreaking than the children begging for money in the street. But these might be the same children. Maybe when I come to them it changes the relationship. I’m no longer a traveler to be propositioned for handouts. I am hired help, digging ditches and moving dirt.

The neighborhood is an ecclectic mix of concrete bunkers, one and two story brick buildings, wooden storefronts, and thatched huts. Families are in and out of all of these: working in the street, playing games, walking goats. Chickens trot around under the ambivalent stares of roosters. Their calls ring out now and then, again and again telling me to wake up.

Again and again I scrape dirt, clay, and trash from our growing trenches. Burried bricks offer a break where I can drop to my knees and dig with my hands. I was not prepared for this. I could use better gloves, and better boots. There must be better shovels. Why hasn’t someone made this easier? Why am I here? Why do I keep going? I slam the shovel into the clay and kick it deeper with my boot. I push down to pull up as much clay as possible. I think about the six hours a day I sit behind a computer screen. I think about the ways I fall short, and how laziness has plagued my life. It’s not so hard to keep going. It only hurts.

Every hour and a half, we walk back to the community center for a break and a snack. It’s a ten minute walk through a less chaotic part of the slum. A good portion of the walk is along a paved road separating us from a wide expanse of open land. Giant powerlines loom off in the faded distance. The children play in the street that no cars drive. They run out a few meters into the open land for games and hunts. It’s mostly women and children here, a reverse of the city where young men mill about and seem drawn to me; eager to help in hopes of some compensation. The children busy themselves with games of all sorts: badmitton with ping pong paddles, rollerblading in skates twice too big with flipflops for wrist gaurds. Jump-rope. For every two playing, there are four more watching, subverting. Then one or two orbiting at a distance. Maybe a 2 year old wearning no pants.

The men who are around, those not working stands selling small prepackaged junk food, seem of a different type than their neighbors. Their clothes are clean and their hair is brushed. Some ride the alleys on japanese motobikes, honking at every cross street just like the tuktuks saying, “Here I am, watch yourself”. While the children smile through oddly straigh teeth shining a brilliant white, these men do not. They don’t quite frown. They don’t pay much attention at all. My imagination sees in their faces a bitter disappointment. Fifteen years ago, these were children chasing after foreigners, laughing and shouting because someone new had come and things were going to change.

Let me be clear, I do not feel like a savior. Seeing us, no one could make that mistake. We’re a bunch of westerners come into the slums to dig ditches. Many of these people are day laborers and know how ditches should be dug. I can’t be sure what they think, but they stand and watch. They pull up chairs. At the very least we’re entertainment. The ditches I dig are uneven. The bricks I will lay will be crooked. I cannot impress them with the quality of my work. So I dig harder and show them at least I will entertain.