Day 6 - Thursday July 9

Thursday the 9th of July, I woke up at 5 o’clock in the morning. It was way too early to get up though, so I turned around once more and slept further until somewhere after 7 o’clock. Robyn had woken by then too and we both got ready, ate a sandwich with egg for breakfast and drank some tea, before we got picked up by the taxi at 8:25 AM. We drove to the placement and started of digging. We had to widen the smaller hole some more, because it was still too small. We took our axes and sledge hammer again and smashed the edges of the hole. However, it soon got really hot, it was worse than the days before so we took a little break. We went back into the computer room, where it was a little cool and we started to practise for the Jamaican quiz which we knew we would get later that day. We discussed some major facts about Jamaica and asked the local builders and our supervisor for some more information on the nation flowers, holidays and some history. It was then already time for lunch. This day we got some curry chicken with rice and a piece of pineapple. After we finished our lunches, we got back to the holes were we did some more digging. There was even a lizard that came to say hi to us, Charlie tried to catch him, but he was too quick for him. A little later I got into the hole to dig out some stones, when I got scared by a bag of chips that was moving in the wind, since I thought iy was the lizard that had come into the hole. Yes I know… I’m a scaredy-cat at times.

After a few more minutes of digging, we made our way up where we would help out with the bending of the steel. This steel was later going to be used to build molds for the cement. It started to get really busy at the school, since the parents of the children had to come to school to pick up their children’s report cards. It was soon time for us to get changed and wait for our taxi to pick us up. When we got at the office, we played some cards and Harry and Charlie showed us some card tricks. We would then start with the quiz and since we had practiced earlier that day, we were assured that we would do pretty well.

Each voluntary group had to choose four people who would participate in the quiz. We decided that Robyn, Harry, Alix and Charlie would play on behalf of our group and we called our team ‘The Hummingbird” (which is Jamaica’s national bird). In the first round, the building group played against the sports group, unfortunately and even despite our preparations, we lost from them so they got to play against the Care group. It was a close call, but the sports group eventually won.

After the quiz, we played some games. We started off with the atom game, which is a game in which everyone just walks around, crisscrossing each other while one person sings a song which goes something like this: All the atoms walk around, all the atoms walk around, all the atoms join together in groups of… And then this person would say a number, which changed every time. It was then up to us to form groups of that amount of people, but only one person too less or too much, would make the whole group lose. It was a really hectic but super funny game.

We then continued our game-afternoon with the ladder game. We all had to sit in pairs on the ground with our legs closed and our feet against each other. Each pair was given a number and as soon as your number was being called, you had to get up, run around the ladder and get back to your seat earlier than you partner by stepping between steps (the legs of the other pairs). This game too was so much fun, but also kind of scary since some people got a little too competitive and just stormed between the steps which made everyone pull in their legs haha.

We then played the human-knot game. We all had to join hands, forming a knot and the aim of the game was to get unknotted. However, my team turned out to be really bad at this game, because we had all fallen over even before we got one person out of the knot. The other team however, was doing much better and they all managed to get out of the knot.

Lastly, we played the In Di River On Di Bank Game", which is similar to the "Simon says" game, only this game is much more active. We used a rope which served as the division between the river and the bank. However, there were also some gangsters with guns in this area, so sometimes we had to dug when we heard a “gunshot”. Every now and then there was a snake too, which meant that we had to jump. And so we played the game and every time someone made a mistake by jumping into the river whereas he should have stayed on the bank or jumped when there was a gunshot, this person would go out. And so after a couple of minutes we were left with only 4 players (out of 30) who had all won the In Di River On Di Bank Game.

After the games we were taken back home by Andre where we had dinner with the family. Unika had made some Macaroni & Cheese with vegetables and sausage, since she did not only want to give us Jamaican food, but also give us some food that we were familiar with. The Mac & Cheese was really good, but to be honest, I preferred the Jamaican food more. We talked some more after dinner and watched a program called “Strange Obsessions” on the television. I was really tired by then, so somewhere at 10 o’clock I made my way to bed.

#Gamesnight #Quiz #Placement #lizard #Digging #Bendingsteel