Day 8 Tuesday 30 September

Today was a little bit of déjà vu, with all the team continuing the plan for the week.  Today’s target was the completion on classroom 3. So much like day 6 everyone was on similar jobs except one classroom further along the corridor. Pam was not feeling too well, so stayed at homebase for the day to rest.

As with all good plans there are always a few things to challenge the progress. Today’s challenges came in the form of significant white ant activity in classroom six, requiring removal of several window frame and the carpentry of new ones.  Fortunately for us the President of the Lapaha School PTA has been helping us and he is a carpenter, so he quickly addressed this need while we continued with our tasks.  Also a storeroom in Classroom 3 was a new task, as the first two classrooms did not have storerooms.  This meant an extra door to fix up and an extra room (albeit a small one) to also recondition in order to finish classroom 3.

Today the Rotarians from Nuku’alofa Rotary also visited us for lunch and a look around the project. I think it is safe to say they were impressed with what was going on, and were pleased to be part of the project as the local partners.  Chilly provided a guided tour and was of course in his element talking to the visitors.

Today was the first day that it has rained heavily a fair bit of the afternoon.  This was quite a relief as it cooled the air and as we were working undercover in the classrooms it did not stop our progress.  The children continued to spectate and the braver ones had fun high fiving us and learning a few tricks from Chilly and Sue, which then became the norm for everyone. A few young boys who don’t seem to go home after school also were keen to help us pack up at the end of the day.

If we can get better internet access, you will hopefully see some good photos involving the children.

The day’s post would not be complete without mention of our evening trip out to dinner at the Friends Café in Nuku’alofa.  This was another nice evening, although we had a long wait for the food to arrive, it was very nice, and we actually had ‘real coffees’ I the form of Latte’s and Cappuccino’s etc.