How much dirt was excavated

The almost final product.  And a few rocks from our first of 10 truck loads. The rest should be on site by the end of next week.

 The first step of removal is breaking up the top soil. We have two teams of three "diggers" working all the live long day to loosen up the ground for our shovlers to load up the barrelas. This is the third tier.

Our barrella's  hard at work.

 Daniel wrapping up our level line after digging our first level trench, two to go.  You can also see our solar panels in the background.

Daniel standing over the beginnings of our second trench hole.  While the first tier is still being dug out.

The work began Monday the 23^rd and finished two days following a neglected Halloween.  After 11 days of 32 people digging, carrying, and sweating in the Ethiopian sun,  the three tiers  have been completely excavated… by hand.  The community worked diligently in highly coordinated teams to excavate the soil needed to properly level the land for the schools foundation.  16 interchanging workers carried 8 barrelas (two person material transporter) for the entire 8 hour work days.  The foot powered transporters made upwards of 30 drops an hour (because of the exorbitant cost, and low quality of Ethiopian wheel barrows, barrellas are an economic, and effective substitute)  while two teams of 4 diggers, utilizing a variety of pick axes, inverted pitch forks, and hoes, continuously loosened and dug the compacted earth, while two teams of two to three fillers shoveled the earth into the barrelas.  

With the pit latrines, drainage ditches, and retaining wall foundations yet dug, there is still plenty of excavating to go.  However, with a little rough math, Daniel and I figured that the approximant amount of earth moved to be in the neighborhood of 260 square meters.   That’s a sperm whale or so worth of soil. Not bad right.