Who can blame them, right? It was at least 96 degrees outside today, and the east wall of Madeline's house was hot by the time they all returned from lunch at the center. So ... our productivity declined considerably this afternoon before we knocked off at 2 to clean up and go to Red Cloud Indian School for a tour and presentation about the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
More on that later. But first, some images from today:
Sydney and Jimbo led us in morning devotions on the deck of the center, reminding us that we are better together as a group when we don't bicker or breed resentment, but instead work together and lift each other up through support and encouragement.
There was a lot of paint scraping to do on several walls of Madeline's house. Conner can be seen in the background working on a north wall. The result of Clark's handiwork -- new and replaced porch slats -- can be seen in the foreground.
Zack did some mudding of the ceiling inside Madeline's house in advance of Jimbo adding popcorn texture to it.
Sydney helped Lindy cover wood beams in Madeline's house with paper by sticking pieces of tape to her arm. So helpful!
Then Jimbo went to town with the air compressor and the mud, shooting it onto the ceiling. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough mud and the popcorn texture he needed, so he went to town again -- only this time to Hot Springs, S.D. (I know ... GROAN for the pun! Hey, it's hot and the end of a long day, so give me a break! ;>} )
Of course, after all that scraping, there was painting to be done, so the whole crew took up paintbrushes, rollers and pans and got busy ... for about 30 minutes, until it got unbearably hot and their enthusiasm waned.
A bit earlier, Jimbo, Robert, Gabe and Jake worked on reattaching some shingles to the west side of Madeline's roof -- another life lesson learned.
She also gave us a speech that covered from the beginning of the U.S. government forcing Native Americans to live in this region of the country and never wander from it to reservation life the way it is today.
It was a fascinating presentation and one that answered a lot of our questions, such as:
Why are all of the trailers in this area so rundown? The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is the second-poorest Indian reservation in the country. It has an 80 percent unemployment rate, and the average annual income is just $6,000.
Why are there so many junked cars parked right around most of the houses? To make some extra money -- since everything is so spread out here and there isn't a NAPA Auto Parts store on every corner, they sell parts from these junked vehicles to others who need them.
It seems like very few people are trying to lift themselves out of poverty and better their own situation. Is this an accurate perception? In fact, it's just the opposite, in many cases. Although the federal government promised housing to all Native Americans early on, with income levels so low, it's a major step just to be able to buy a trailer and put it on the land where their ancestors got their start. Red Cloud Indian School is one of the other major efforts under way to give the Pine Ridge children a quality, tuition-free education so they can live better lives than their parents. In fact, 92 percent of the school's graduates go on to college or some form of post-secondary education!
Which fits well with this saying found in among the tile floor of a Pine Ridge Shell station:
Unfortunately, we had to cut the tour short in order to get back to the Makasan center for a delicious dinner of BBQ hamburgers, fresh corn on the cob (transported all the way from Wyoming), chips, pork and beans, and peaches. Then we quickly cleaned up and headed back toward Pine Ridge for our next adventure.
And what an adventure it was! Asa had set up a tour of a local high-school math teacher's buffalo ranch. For $3 per person, he loads people into the back of his pickup and drives them through some goat-trail roads, up hills and along drop-offs, until he reaches his herd. When the buffalo see the truck coming, they walk right up to it so the people in the bed of the truck can feed them pellets by hand:
Although it was cool seeing the buffalo up close like that, the coolest parts were laughing along with everyone else in the back of the truck as we bounced along together, then hearing our guide tell stories about his people and their culture after showing us a mounted rare baby white buffalo that had been born there on his ranch in the mid-1990s and died from illness before it lived very long. (It was only the third white buffalo ever born in North America, that they know of, and although the odds of one being born are from 10 million-to-1 to 1 billion-to-1, a second one was born on the same ranch just three weeks later!)
A quick stop at the gas station in Pine Ridge, then back across the rough U.S. Highway 18 to the center (new term: Rez Roads, refers to torn-up roads on the reservation -- most of them, in other words) for a bowl of ice cream to cap off another great day!
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