Kenya, Day 7

Tuesday was painting day!  I woke up a 9 am (it kept getting later and later without an alarm clock!), ate breakfast (cereal and tea), and got ready to pain.
 

The first room we painted was one of the younger kids dorms, and it was bubblegum pink!  We only needed to paint one section of the wall that was patched up awhile ago, but the pink we had did not match the wall.  We just went ahead and painted an accent walk of a bit darker pink since we didn’t have enough paint for the entire room.  I started with the edges of the wall while Tarin painted with the roller.  Since we only had one wall, the room didn’t take long at all.

The next room was the bathroom on the same side of the dorm.  We needed to paint it a hunter green color because we think there was lye in the cement that was eating through the paint.  The walls at IAA are all concrete, I am not sure if there is stucco in Kenya or not.  All of the sudden when I was painting I got really light headed and kept having to take breaks.  I don’t really like taking breaks when paiting because it just prolongs the process, but I felt like I had to get out of there!  There was only a small window (maybe 1 foot by 1 foot) that opened in the bathroom so there wasn’t much ventilation.  I would go outside and breath for a bit, then come back and paint.  Then I started getting sick to my stomach and dry heaving…that’s when I learned it was enamel paint instead of latex paint.  I was fine in the pink room because the pink paint was latex, but the green paint (and all of the other paint they bought) was enamel.  I had never painted with enamel before because it is outlawed in the US.

Tarin suggested that I take a break for a bit so I wouldn’t get sick anymore.  I took a nap but still felt nauseous all day and didn’t do much else.  Sad day!  I wanted to help, but I couldn’t. :/

Lesson learned, don't paint with enamel paint in places where the ventilation isn't the best!