Habitat

My summer is turning out to be busier than I expected. Two weeks ago I got to help out with a Global Village Habitat for Humanity build in Moramanga. There were 23 volunteers from the US, Australia, Singapore, and Canada who arrived for 10 days of building houses. The group was an interesting mix of retired business people, a working dentist, a military guy on leave, a contractor, a maintenance person and a random college girl. But this was the most well traveled group of people I had ever met. One of the older volunteers told me he had been to 88 countries, and was still going! He was at least 75 years old… There was even a returned Peace Corps Volunteer who had served in Pakistan in 1961, he was 82. I hope that I can still be traveling at that age.

Myself and six other Peace Corps volunteers helped out as translators, and brick carriers, and kid entertainers, and tourguides. We thought we would be just translating, but were happily allowed to help with everything else…sometimes telling three year olds not to stand on a pile of bricks, and other times asking how our bricklaying was looking. I thought the building was the best part though. Getting to talk to the homeowners and see the walls of a house go up within a week was such a nice change from normal Peace Corps work. Throughout the week we rotated between five different houses and got to do a variety of different things. Most of the jobs we could do were moving bricks, laying bricks, shoveling dirt, and entertaining the kids at each house. But compared to a normal day at site, I was happy for even the most mindless work. At least I felt productive! And it was a good workout to say the least. At the end of 10 days I actually felt like I had some arm muscle…a rare occurrence.

First few days at house 5

My best friend at house 2

Laying bricks at house 1

PCV Mada and RPCV Pakistan

Ribbon cutting at house 3

Another perk of the build was our accommodations. The church compound we were supposed to stay in was booked, so we ended up staying at the nicest hotel in Moramanga. And my friend Kim and I ended up with the suite on the top floor. King size bed, couches, flat screen tv and a bathroom bigger than my house at site. It was pretty amazing. When we first got to our room I ran and jumped onto the bed, expecting there to be a mattress…it was a painful surprise when I bounced off the wood planks that served in place of a mattress. It was interesting though, for such a nice looking hotel, there were some serious issues that we don’t usually have at the cheap hotels volunteers usually stay in. For example, one morning Kim and I work up to find our bathroom had flooded….water was leaking out of the walls. Another night someone’s door lock completely broke and hotel staff had to climb in through the balcony. Another room had their balcony door fall out their balcony, and lots of others heard rats every night….I guess you can’t win them all. The hot showers were enough to keep me happy. I probably set a record for how many showers I took in a week…it was amazing.

We didn’t finish the houses by the end of the week, but most of them were very close. A few of them just had the roof and plaster left, or the flooring left. All except one house which was the least favorite of the group. The Malagasy workers who were in charge of house one didn’t like to work but would rather smoke all day and watch the vazaha carry bricks. So that slowed down the build. They also had interesting working technique. In one case they had to pull a wooden branch out of a brick wall which was holding up scaffolding. One end of the branch was significantly larger than the other, and they tried to pull that end through the small hole…It was clearly not going to fit. They didn’t try to switch directions, they brought over a huge sledgehammer and enlarged the hole. The whole house was shaking…and I’m wondering how long those walls are going to stand.

By the end of the 10 days everyone was pretty exhausted, but really happy with the progress we had made. Of the five houses, we had finished the walls of all of them, the rooves on some of them, and the floors on others. This was probably my favorite part of Peace Corps so far. The people, the work, the experience….it was a great 10 days. Another group is coming for a build in October, and hopefully I’ll be able to help out with that one, too.