Day by day in the DR: Day 9: Bottle School I

We all got bused over to a small village, where our project lay: a school made from bottles. It began when the local priest asked Dave to build him a school. Dave agreed upon the promise that the priest and villagers would collect 30,000 bottles and stuff them with trash - all within the following two weeks. A fortnight later, Dave returned to discover that they had in fact completed their task. Now it was just ours to help them build it.

Jake hard at work

The wooden structure and tin roof had already been constructed, and the groups before us had made some progress with several walls, however there was so much still left un-bottled. So we set to work nailing chicken wire on either side of the posts, filling them with straight lines of bottles layered up to the ceiling, securing these bottles with metal wire, and finally cementing over these bottles a few times. A septic tank was also started, with several of the group members digging a 6 ft hole in back of the school. We took breaks to play with the kids, buy snacks from the store, and even visit the local honey man.

This was probably one of my favorite experiences of the whole trip, visiting the honey bee man. 9 of us took the journey to find him, walking through the village, down a forest path and across a ridiculous 6-inch wide bridge made of wire. As we walked up the small incline to his comb kingdom, he spotted us and made his way down with an enormous cloth covered bowl. After greeting us, he began plucking large, green leaves from a nearby branch. On each he placed a fist sized comb, dripping with this sticky, fresh goodness. We emptied our pockets and gave him the coins we had as thanks, and made our way back. I'd just tip the leaf down and let the honey drip down the center of the leaves and into my mouth. The best was to just take a huge bite out of the comb, letting the honey spurt out of each hole as I chewed the waxy comb - savoring every moment. This experience, among many others, will stick with me for a long time.

Sophie plays patty cake with Soline

There were so many adorable kids there too, who helped us build their own school. We all took time from work to play patty cake and tic tac toe in the dust with the children, who were all so beautiful and cute.

After our sweaty, cramped bus ride home, we dove into the crashing ocean waves followed by the pool where we relaxed for the rest of the day followed by another riveting movie and discussion