Dong Thap

This little boy was a neighbor boy who happily helped us to lay brick. He also enjoyed practicing the English he had learned at school--i.e. "Hello" "What is your name?" "How old are you?" What a sweetie!

The picture on the left is one of the houses that we worked on in Dong Thap. Dong Thap was very quaint and rural.

I'm out of order with this posting. I wrote this for the main Catalyst blog and then just sent it on to our blog. I'll add some pics.

The first thing people noticed about Dong Thap was that it was "not as
poor". The big adventure of Dong Thap has been the Tuk-tuks. These
are little motorcycle/trucks that the teams used to truck out to the
work sites. It was a ride through skinny roads and paths past rice
fields, duck farms, and Vietnamese country living. The home team
split into three and one group got to use their carpentry skills and
completely finish a house! The other group continued their finely
honed bricklaying and latrine-digging talents. The children at the
home sites enjoyed practicing their English on us and helping us with
the bricks.

One of the great treats when working on a house is looking up to see a
girl ride by on her brand new Catalyst bicycle. She's always sitting
up tall and proud! We all yell--"Catalyst bike!" so everyone working
will stop and take a look! As far as the distribution team goes--our
kids had a great time riding the tuk-tuks and have become a well oiled
machine when distributing bikes, rice, sugar, noodles, and beans.

The medical team continues to methodically labor away--they're studs!
Their big excitement was when a group of nearby homebuilders fell
through the roof of the home they were building. Caroline just about
had a heart attack when she heard--thought it was our group. But it
wasn't us--and the medical team triaged the guys, stitched them up and
sent them on their way. Mission accomplished!

The evening of Day 4 ended with an official dinner. Lots of courses--
curried rabbit, lotus seeds, lotus flower salad with beef, clam soup,
fresh mango and grapefruit. Bruce Whittaker was the toast of the
evening. He sat at the official table with the local government
officials where there was much toasting and congratulating and
celebrating. We had to carry him back to the bus--(just kidding :) ).