Building

(by Susan)

Today we began what we are here to do, and what many of you helped with. 

We arrived yesterday evening into Tbeang Meanchey in Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province – you can find it on Google Earth, if you have trouble with Google Maps.  The Province is known through Traveller Alerts as the home of the amazingly wonderful temple near the Thai border which is actively under dispute…  it’s a long way from us, so please don’t fret!  The town is larger than I’d expected, and I certainly didn’t expect to have access to wi-fi at the restaurant!  (it’s a small-ish system so I won’t push it with trying to get images uploaded and transferred to this – it’s likely I’d be there ‘til lunchtime.)  They don’t get too many Western visitors, so we’re a tad obvious in town.  Apart from meals and buying water at the service station, however, we’ve hardly been in the town itself, really.

This morning we headed out at 6:30 for breakfast and then to the village.  It is a little more than an hour South of Tbeang Meanchey, approximately 60 km away.  The last leg of the journey was on a dirt track that seriously challenged our van, and seriously challenged my stomach on the way home.  The track twisted and turned through scrubby bush, much of it in the process of being burnt off.  I’m told that this is to make way for hopefully planting rice in 6 months’ time.  In between there were occasional banana and rubber crops.  The village itself appeared to have 20 or so dwellings, mostly of wood and palm construction.  The houses are low to the ground, many with timber platforms at the front.  They run along a single road, and are about 20-30m apart.  There are no fences, and children, dogs, hens, puppies, chicks, motorbikes, and people wander freely between them.  It wasn’t clear where their water comes from, but each house had an enormous earthenware pot full of fresh drinking water.  True to the promise, there was also a beautifully constructed pit toilet with timber-framed edges and a sackcloth frame built especially for us.  Which was nice!

When we arrived, our houses had been constructed to frame stage and had their roofs and doors attached.  Our job is to attach the sheets of very thin tin to the hardwood frames using locally-made, and variably reliable nails.  We also nail down the floorboards – that’s the plum job!  The houses are on posts which take them 6ft off the ground and away from the water-flow of the wet season.  That means that all of the nailing happens on ladders, or from the ground for the bottom row (or from a beautifully constructed little stool if you’re as short as me!). I haven’t been up and down ladders so much since….  well, since ever, really.  The Rules, you’ll remember, said that we shouldn’t show our wimpiness so each of the three times I belted my thumb with the hammer (I’m a slow learner) I laughed and gritted my teeth.  I don’t like that rule.  We managed to finish three houses before lunchtime, so it actually felt do-able by then.  Six today, four tomorrow.  The day was warm enough – 32C in the heat of the day – but we stayed hydrated and there was water to pour over our heads when we needed it.  We took regular breaks, but the Cambodian contractors and the few men from the village didn’t.  They seemed to be having fun showing us that ladders are barely necessary while they hung out of doors and windows or walked along the beams to hammer nails straight from impossible angles.  Maybe we aren’t made of the same stuff!

The village is:  Koh Loong, in Rak Smey commune, Ro Vieng, Preah Vihear province.

Looking around the village at the housing that they’re living in at present, I think the families will be pleased with being up and above it all under a roof that doesn’t leak and is less likely to blow away.  These houses are one of the steps towards the village becoming self-sufficient in produce, and hopefully have some to sell in the not-too-distant future.  The families have been a part of a savings program to get to this point, and have clearly been working to get this far.  Some of the families, too, have been selected by village residents to have a house.  Often they are families who aren’t in a position to save like the others, and they could be a grandmother with many parentless grandchildren, for instance.  I’m not sure, yet, who our families are, but I believe that these 10 houses will put a roof over the heads of approximately 60 people.

At this end of the day, we’re a tad muscle-weary.  It’ll be an early night as we’re up and at it again for a 6:30 breakfast and to complete our remaining four houses.  Now that we know what to expect, I’m looking forward to it!