By our last full day in the village, the foundation was completely dug out and it was time to start moving the large rocks from a huge pile off to the side of the site, into the holes we had dug. These rocks varied between about 10 and 80 pounds and once again we were amazed and humbled to watch how the women of the village would carry some of these huge and heavy rocks on their heads. For a long while Desmond was picking up the stones to put on the women’s heads and they would sometimes laugh at him if he offered them too small of a rock (and these “too small” rocks might have weighed 20+ pounds). They would then point at a significantly larger stone that he could barely lift to get up on their head. If he didn’t have a large enough stone handy to offer them, they’d often stack 2 or 3 stones on their head instead.

We were sweaty, dirty and exhausted, while the Nepalese women, still dressed beautifully by the way, made it all look so easy. Their strength was truly inspiring. We wondered why there were so few men working with us, but then realized it was because many of the men were away working outside of the village (and often the country) to earn more money. So the hard work was left to the woman!

We finished our work day as usual, with a final circle of our group. Our Trek guides would always ask if anyone had any questions or comments to share, and usually several people spoke up. This time it was two different villagers, thanking us again for coming to them, working alongside them and helping them build a proper school for their children. Once again, tears were shed and we did our final cheer with many emotions running high.

Such strength!

Before heading away from the work site to go have lunch with our Build-on team, we made sure to get a team photo with all the village woman that had set the work bar so high!

Our BuildOn gang and the amazing village women!

As we were walking from the work site, back in to the village, we passed the current school and the school kids screamed to us from their classrooms, so of COURSE we needed to get a photo of ALL these beautiful kids that would be taking advantage of the new school that we were building.

After that, we walked back in to the village and had a quick final lunch (again, we were totally spoiled with the fresh and delicious food made for us!) before heading back to our homes to shower and get ready for the Goodbye celebration, which was scheduled at 2:00pm.