Ditch Diggin’ in Costa Rica

Let’s get to the nitty gritty…we went to Costa Rica to work and work we did.  After hanging with the campers for two days, the Americans were itching to get their hands dirty.  We were split into groups and sent off to different work sites.  Dear Husband and I were on a team to build an outdoor shower.  The camp has a very fun, very dirty adventure trail and they wanted a place for the campers to rinse off before heading to the pool or the showers (it’s that messy of a trail).

This little video was made mid-week so families back home could see what we were up to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KIjNr2iV7c

We started by digging a trench from the water source, 300 yards to where the shower was going to be.  It only took about a dozen of us to knock that trench out in one day.  While we were ditch diggin’ another part of our team was figuring out how the shower pad and plumbing was going to be laid.  One sweet high schooler put her brains to work and formed a hexagon on the ground and figured out where the plumbing was going to go.  She was more than happy to work on this as she was not a physical labor type of gal (she would be the first to admit that she’s more into using her brain than her muscles).  We dubbed her the project engineer and she stayed on top of all things analytical.  I’m fine with that since my school learnin’ wouldn’t have been much use in this situation and I was happy to dig a ditch.  Stay in school kids.

These are some mad ditch digging skills…you can hardly see where it was once we covered it up.

By day two we had put down the pipe and filled it back in.  We would have been ready to pour concrete but it started raining.  By lunch on the third day we were done.  The head of camp maintenance, David (pronounced Da-VEED) was pretty impressed at how speedy we were.  To be honest, I think he was expecting this project to take us all week.  (right here imagine me buffing my dirt crusted nails on my sweaty t-shirt)

Testing the shower.  On the left is our project engineer.  Check out her precious expression at seeing her creation came to life.  She really took ownership of this project and it was wonderful to see how excited she was.

Engineer Emily getting the first shower.

Just as we were testing the plumbing a group of day campers came off the muddy adventure trail this shower was meant for.  They were so excited to see the shower and started rushing toward us.  Unfortunately, the concrete wasn’t ready for all that action and we had to hold them off.  Despite being denied a shower they were very sweet and happy to try to communicate with the Americans.

I don’t speak very much Spanish but we were able to exchange names and tell them where we were from.

Stay tuned for more awesome fun and hard work.