Today we danced the mud dance.

With the energy of puppies locked in a meat locker, we covered ourselves in mud cakes dug from the ground. Mud flew everywhere, it lodged in our fingernails—red soil of the earth, the mythical kind wreaking of life—and probably containing some stuff we’re glad we didn’t know was in there—the kind some say god carved into the first human beings, we slopped onto the wooden frame slated to become a home.

“People know when you have been to Kisii, by the red mud caked on your shoes,” Calvin said.

I molded some mounds into figures, elephants—it looks like a penis, Calvin said of one sculpture—but it was a trunk, which, yes, I guess looks similar.

A 64-year-old man who’s name I can’t remember so we will dub Mr. Happy Joyful Dancing Pants, showed us how to dance in the mud with a youthful exuberance and limberness I can only hope I have when I am that age.

At our worksite jubilant music in a language we didn’t understand played upbeat songs as we continued to dance the mud into the walls that is to be  Simon, Samual and Wilfred’s new home.

Kids from the village came to watch the dancing mazungus. Women carried water from a well on their heads to turn the red dirt into something more.

A glee at a job almost done seemed to sing from the walls.

A week from now, when Tyler and Calvin return to snow covered North Dakota, when I am in Nairobi covering the upcoming elections, a final layer will be added and the house will be not just be abstract good intentions prompted by Calvin, but a livable home, a staging ground for three orphan boys as they work to get the education their parents—buried a few hundred yards in the same soil—dreamed they might have.

To everyone who helped make this happen. Thank you!