I carried bricks on my head

Women here really do carry everything on their head. Men too. I'm amazed at the piles of stuff they can not only get to their head from the ground, but then carry around without holding onto. Yesterday I spent the day in Kampala and I saw a guy carrying 3 big suitcases on his head. And I always see women with a million (okay probably 12) bunches of bananas on buckets just on their heads. These guys have strong necks. They always make it look so effortless. Like they just happen to have a gigantic thing balanced on their head. It will always amaze me.

On Thursday this week I was able to carry bricks on my head. If you've been following my blog you would know that we fundraised to help build a school (PDI Nursery School) and also to build 5 latrines at the Liahona school. The Butali's are the family that run the school. They are amazing. When we talked to them about helping them build they mentioned that they have a pile of bricks that we could use for the structure around the pits. The problem is, these bricks are in the middle of their corn fields. So how do we get the bricks from the pile to a truck? We carry them on our heads! Around 200 kids from the school came to help. This is a primary school so they're elementary aged kids. Some of the kids were probably as young as 6 years old. I felt like we were slave drivers because some of them were so little! They were all very hard workers though. A lot of times when people are carrying things on their heads they make these little banana leaf "hats". The girls from the school helped me make one. Meaning they made me one. They circle the banana leaf around itself and tuck it in so it's a little circle cushion for your head! It helped a lot. 

The bricks were heavy. I could only carry two at a time because I'm a wimpy foreigner. At first I had to use both hands to make sure the bricks stayed on my head and my arms were so tired. So so tired. I had only made one trip with two bricks and my arms were about to fall off. So I watched the girls I was with to see what they were doing because they seemed okay. They would only use one arm at a time so their other arm can rest. This saved me! I successfully carried around 20 bricks in 3 hours. A lot of the boys carried four at a time. I am such a wimp. One guy who came later carried five. How can their necks handle this?! 

I had a good time and realized carrying things on your head isn't as easy as it seems. And that I should do more push ups.