Children as young as three years of age were sometimes left in charge of the baby while their parents went to work.   Joytish wanted to offer day care to families and plans were well in hand when we joined them.  Tony accompanied Khaing Zar to the lumber yard to select the building materials and a team of local carpenters was hired to erect a simple traditional building

The method of accessing water from the well was primitive.  Joytish knew of a simple treadle pump that had recently become  available so Tony went to talk to the supplier and decided it was suitable for his purpose.   http://www.proximitydesigns.org.  He also devised a tower to house it and a roof to protect the operator.   A metal water tank was commissioned and a village carpenter was hired to do the construction, he was a little surprised at Tony's specifications, we wanted it to last for many years

In order to make the school more self sufficient Thanlyin had recently hired a gardener and he along with his family had moved into the old schoolhouse

His family were delightful as we were to find out when Tony began his next project

He had noticed that the wire carrying the electricity supply to his school was going missing at the weekend when nobody was around.  Strung for hundreds of feet on bamboo poles it was easy to cut out a section.   Tony wanted to bury it but we couldn't find direct bury wire in Yangon.  We spent Christmas day feeding regular wire through one-inch plastic conduit then buried it several feet down.  A group of men from the village dug the trench, it was a horrible job across rock hard ground covered with bush and they charged the princely sum of $20 for several days work

If I hadn't seen his cable laying crew I wouldn't have believed it.   The 5 year old daughter and 9 year old son of the gardener and his 13 year old nephew worked like troopers.   The older boy was very handy and a quick and willing student.  Much to their surprise at the end of the day each received their first pay packet.  Where is Lord Shaftsbury when you need him?

The school was fully wired for lights etc but the power in this country area was usually only on for a maximum of two hours each day, so we had to try something different.  In Yangon we managed to source a large 12V battery and a 220v charger inverter.  Tony  wired it up to charge the battery when the mains power was on and then supply power from the battery through the inverter when the mains was off.  Finding a suitable size inverter was a challenge we enjoyed.  Unfortunately we had to leave Myanmar before it was fully tested so we hope it worked!

What a beauty, I couldn't take my eyes or my lens off her beautiful face,  I guess I didn't do my fair share of the work that day