Mud between our toes... and under our nails and on our clothes and in our hair...

~Written by Steven Hepburn, part of the Hope 2 Kenya Youth Team 2010.

On July 10th the team, minus Laura who was sick and had to stay at the compound, traveled to Veronica Home (A home for children who are HIV positive), our plan for the day was to mud the hut in the morning then paint the home in the afternoon. Our plans were switched around as soon as we got there, due to a lack of water to make the mud needed to construct the hut. Apparently their was a blockage some where in the water line, but the water was trickling out of the tap so the started collecting what they could and we began painting.

There were four rooms that needed to be painted: the main living room/hallway, a boy’s room, two girl’s rooms, and the house mother’s room. We got started right away painting the living room and hallway a flesh tone, the boys room a light green on the top half of the walls and a blue on the bottom, in the girls room we painted walls pink and purple. We didn’t finish the blue in the boys room as we had to let the green paint dry first, we couldn’t paint the house mothers room because it had only been primed that morning and needed to dry, the hallway needs a second coat, and we got all of the girls rooms done but one wall that had the furniture pushed up against it. But we are going to go back to finish the painting, and by the time we had done all of that painting the house aunt and mother had prepared a large-portioned lunch of beans, cabbage, and rice.

After we tried our best to eat everything on our plates, we started to begin mudding the hut. Cathy took the ceremonious first jump into the mud to squish it around and she made one mud ball and put it in place thus beginning our a long, hard job! But some how Cathy and Sandy escaped the work to go out and purchase furniture for the home. We all took turns either making mud balls in the pit or putting the mud in place on the huts wooden framing. Some of us were not so fond of the idea of getting in the mud pit to make the balls while the rest of us were very excited to get in the pit in our bare feet and squish the mud between our toes and attempt to make balls, when I asked somebody what the trick to making the balls was they said “be Kenyan”! Although we weren’t Kenyan we completed the hut in just over 2 hours, much to the surprise of our Kenyan taxi drivers.

We then played with the children from the home while waiting for our taxi’s to come and get us; we handed out suckers and bubbles to all of the children who had a blast with them! Although we all went back to the compound looking like oompa loompas, because we were all stained a wonderful shade of orange from the mud, this is definitely an experience we will all remember for a very long time!



And if you are interested in building your own mud hut here are some simple instructions:
1) Make mud and squish it between your toes.
2) Put mud in between sticks that are constructed to resemble a hut.
3) Keep piling mud between sticks until it looks like your finished.
4) Pray that the walls don’t fall down!