The Past 2 Days in Philippolis

Yesterday was a very fulfilling day. Kate came up with the great idea of doing a “60-minute makeover” type ordeal on an 80-year-old man’s shanty house. His home was in horrible shape when we first arrived. There were several windows missing, the paint job (both inside and outside) was non-existent, there were spider webs, spiders, and black widow egg sacks underneath his bed and table, his mattress was completely worn down and full of dust, and his clothes were scattered around… basically this man needed our help, because at his old age, he would have never gotten around to fixing up any of these problems. We started by taking all of his furniture outside, scrubbing down the walls (outside and inside) with soap, and sweeping the floors and the ceiling. Then we painted the outside a light tan color, and put in new windows. Once the outside was complete, we wiped down his table, his beds, and put all of his clothes on hangers. Kate bought two new mattresses for his beds, so he will hopefully sleep better and not kill his back with the crappy mattresses he had before. Next we painted the inside with a similar color as the outside, let it dry a bit, and then moved his stuff back in his house. Kate also bought a bunch of useful household items such as sugar, salt, flour, coffee, and other generous items. The coolest part about this whole project was that Kate had the old man leave his house for the entire day, because he is very grumpy, and she was worried he would complain the entire time. She told him we were only going to redo his windows. When he came back, he was ecstatic with what he saw. It was nice to see this grumpy old man with a huge smile on his face!
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Today has been a bit slow. We continued building the elementary school, but everyone was really tired from yesterday’s work. I just had some lunch, and it gave me some energy to hopefully do a better job working this afternoon. Kate had mentioned that I may be going on a hike with some of the local kids around the mountains this afternoon. If that works out, it should be a lot of fun! Tomorrow we are going to see some tigers that someone has on their farm, and has been raising them for many years. It’s going to be weird seeing tigers in Africa, but I’ve never seen a tiger in “the wild” so it should be a great time nonetheless.