Day 8 beckoned as we had a number of activities to attend to. Firstly, it was the continuation of the mangrove planting at Setiu River. We had a blast of a time as we planted close to 400 mangrove and palm tree seedlings together. The morning sun was at its scorching best but we duly persevered and managed to pull through today's first goal. Even though the tide timings were not on our side, we managed to finish the job at around 1115.
After lunch, we commenced renovating the selcted households. We were split into two groups where one group had to replace the old walls with new plywood ones and also to put a new flooring while the other group had to build a new toilet for the residents of the other household.
The first group started to demolish the walls to make way for the new ones. Working together was great as it was a first time for most of us in renovating a house. The main things other than demolishing the walls were nailing the wood to the frame of the house and getting the right measurements for the plywood. It was a first day that went well for the first group.
For the second group, we engaged the help of carpenters and and the male owner himself, who constructed the other parts of the house. It too was a first time building a toilet from scratch for many of us. The carpenters helped to mark out the area where we were to build the toilet and guided us on the preparation of cement. After that, we started to lay out the bricks for the wall of the toilet.
Halfway through our house renovating session, we went to the Setiu River to witness the release of several 3-year-old painted terrapins. This was under the kind invitation of River's friend, Alex. During the session, we learnt that this group of conservationists reared the painted terrapins for 3 years before releasing them into the Setiu River. After returning from the painted terrapins release session, the two groups carried on with their reparation works in the respective houses before heading for yet another sumptous dinner at Kak Tah's house.
Signing off,
Ashok and Melissa
Ashok and Melissa
