Service- Under Construction Build October 5th 2013

On October 5th, I went on the first Under Construction build of the year. About a third of the Under Construction club and I went to Harvest Academy, a school in the Kangemi slum. After a short bus ride to the slum, the crew embarked, tools in hand, to the school. Upon reaching the school, the headmaster gave us our assignment, to transform a hilly piece of ground into a flat, usable plot of land to be used as a soccer pitch for the children.

Above is how the terrain looked before we got there, it was highly slanted. The mound of dirt that crops up in the background was where our battle was to take place. Maintaining the level of the ground in the foreground, we pretty much had to demolish that hill and move it back by about 4 or 5 feet.

This picture better shows the true nature of the land we had to flatten. At the bottom it was fine, yet about 80% of the pitch was covered in soil about 2 to 3 feet high, what I am standing on in this picture. As you can see, we had to cleave and relocate all the soil covering up what was to be our pitch and flatten out the land.

These two were my faithful companions throughout the trip. The tool on the left is a traditional spade, used for moving loose soil out of the way. The tool on the right is the African Jembe, my favorite tool. It has a flat sharpened blade and each swing cleaves and breaks apart the soil, making my life easier by tearing through all the hard soil in my way. I may have had some pent up anger during this trip because in my digging ferocity, i managed to break two Jembes, snapping them in half. 

The Jembe does not require much force to cleave through soil, yet by swapping with a partner and working in quick bursts of energy, we were able to clear much soil.

After about two to three hours of hard labor, we were at the point of the picture above. Exchanging sea shanties and work songs, we toiled until our progress was clearly visible, decimating more mountain than any of us previously believed we could.

After 5 hours of work, we  succeeded into transforming a large mound of packed earth into the flatland that you see in the pictures above. Through blood and sweat, a small team of 7 students persevered into terraforming previously unusable land into the beginnings of a soccer pitch for the kids at Harvest Academy to play on. The work was tough but incredibly rewarding, and the smiles on the kids' faces made it all worth it.