It’s finished – Habitat for Humanity Nepal 2012

We finished the house only moments before the mayor of Lekhnath showed up to preside over the ceremony.  Bring forth the mass of neighborly villagers and the members of the Habitat team, to dedicate the house at the ridge of the valley to the lovely Ms. Sharmila Pariyar and her son.  Happy happy, joy joy.

We still had work to do when we arrived that morning.  The entire back wall of the house and a significant section of the eastern bow had yet to be mortared.  Have no fear; along with three technicians, I, the ‘American Technician’, was hot on the scene (it was really hot out).

Mortar was mixed, rocks were hauled, dirt was picked and piked, and all the while the village kids were running around being obnoxious trying to help out the big people.  Kanchan pulled me aside and handed me a drawing she colored for me, a little horse, inscribed “I LOVE YOU”. awwwwwww

she rules

When the procession of Habitat Nepal officials finally arrived, we had just slathered the final mess of mortar inside the western room of the house, in effect finishing the build right at the last moment.  A red ribbon was tied up upon the porch, a Habitat banner was hung on the outside wall, and table was set up with a military-grade steel tray filled with red chalk and flowers.  It was time to begin.

They called us up one by one and placed a wreath around our becks of vibrantly colored flowers culled from the valley below.  They chalked our foreheads, handed us a slightly-religiously tinged thank you certificate (It is Habitat, after all), and placed a traditional Nepaliese Topi upon our heads.  As a side note, someone really needs to inform the local municipalities that American heads are orders of magnitude larger than Nepali heads, so a to avoid the garishly silly sight of tiny Topis atop massive western noggins.

Staci gave a heartfelt speech that left her in tears, and Sharmila spoke through Narayan translating, also leaving Staci in tears.  Staci was in tears, is the point here.

NOTE: I wasn’t able to get any pictures of this, as Staci’s camera died, and she used mine with her SD card to take videos and pictures.  Thus, I got nothin’.

It was nice seeing the house officially handed off, but due to the constant work leading directly up to the ceremony, it felt like one more job that had to be done, rather than a glorious transitory moment.  No matter; the work was finished, and as all things must pass, we simply must keep on moving onward.

I was planning on giving a big goodbye to the kids who’d become my little guys “(BROOOHKKKSSS!!! *arm flex*”), but someone had the great idea to give the them the rest of our uneaten snacks and therefore they, as kids, were entirely distracted from the fact that we were leaving for good.  Goodbye waves from afar would have to do.  However, I did seek out Kanchan for a especially special hug; I’m gonna miss that one.

this is a picture of Lake Fewa for no real reason

We grabbed all the Habitat-owned tools, piled them into the back of the bus that had come all the way down to pick us up (YOU MEAN THE BUS CAN COME ALL THE WAY DOWN TO PICK US UP…..), and took the treacherous drive up to town.  There’s a reason the bus didn’t come every afternoon to pick us up: the roads around the edge of the valley are treacherous, causing moments of not-just-slightly hilarious panic while tipping around tight edges.  Finishing building a house then tumbling off a Nepalese ridge isn’t exactly my ideal method of logging off planet Earth, but I figured it wouldn’t be the world’s worst way to go.

Saying goodbye to Anil Sky was also an emotional moment.  He started to break down a little himself as he got off the bus for the last time.  The last two weeks he’d spent with us junk mouthed Americans seemed to rub off on him, and a little instant nostalgia must have seeped into his brain.  He was the rare a goofball who knew exactly what he was doing at all times, guiding us into correct Nepali construction methods, laughing along the way.  We really got along and would spend a lot of time on the site working together on the little things, one upping each other with bamboo flinging and weapon tossing tricks.  He was my on-site buddy, the closest thing I had out here to a partner in crime.  If I end up never again crossing paths with Anil Sky, I will be surprised.  Dude is bigger than Nepal.

This, being the last full night together, we all went out to a fancy dinner, to a fancy bar afterwards, and ended up at a scandalous thumping dance party before spending the night on the rooftop talking until the wee hours.  This blog is not in the business of recounting the details of evening activities, but suffice it to say we did Pokhara right.

We did do Pokhara right.  We built a house for a local villager, helping to provide one of the basic human needs to someone who did not have it prior.  A village has now grown, with a new member of the family beginning to set a solid foundation.  This is something worth being proud of; there aren’t many moments when you know you’ve helped, but here it is as evident upon Sharmilas face: the warmth of gratitude; the glow of understanding; the hangover that follows.

OFF TO THE MOUNTAINS!!!

suck it, Macchapucchare!

Days 2/3/4 – A Case for Habitat

We’ve finished our fourth work day, and with it arrives the weekend in Nepal.  Naturally we are all dead tired, working out muscles that few of us on the team even knew we had.  This sort of work isn’t routine for any of the volunteers (a disheartening lack of professional carpenters on the team this go around…), so we are all sweaty and spent by the end of the day.

Speaking of routines, now that we’ve made it a week, we have indeed found ours.  Mornings start early here in Pokhara, rising around 5:30AM to slog ourselves down for breakfast and instant coffee before heading out the door at 7.  We hop aboard our ramshackle bus for the bumpy ride through the tourist port where our hotel lay, and on towards our worksite in Lakeside about 45 minutes away.  Four work days in, it is indeed starting to feel like a commute, but with that truly glorious Machapuchare impressing it’s sacred visage upon us, this is not a bad morning grind.

Machapuchare, hangin’ there, bein’ a god

The kids almost always greet us as we descend the hill into the valley of our worksite.  We greet them, and they smile toothy ‘Namaste!’s our way, instantly brightening the day.  They’ve taken a liking to me in

these guys greet us each morning.

particular, as I’ve got the arms they like to grab on to as I swing them around like a helicopter.  They love saying my name, (‘BRUUHKS!!’), while flexing their arms and making snarly face.  I’m some sort of hammer wielding American Gurkha to them, and I’m gonna let ’em believe it.

The frame of the place was already set up when we began work on Tuesday, so the next step was to fill in the siding with bamboo slats.  This is a real labor intensive work–not hard work per se, though some of the knots in the bamboo were a bitch to hack through with the blade.  This is good work, and I already really dig working with bamboo.  Maybe there’s a bamboo gazebo in my future-backyard?  Or yours?  (I’m cheap)

We also began filling in the floor area with large stones, atop the dirt and rocks tossed in from digging the latrine.  This was an all-hands-on-deck effort, requiring everyone on the team to shuffle from the

whistle while you work (or else!)

rock pile to the house, tossing rocks in through the future-windows and future-doors.  After filling in the huge rocks, the next effort was to fill in between with tiny stones and pebbles, in order to minimize the empty spaces so the cement can go in efficiently.  This required a bit more finesse, and it was a fun game to try to fill the hole as tightly as possible.  If there’s a joke there, I don’t see it.

OH, I’ve caught a Nepali friend! (they’re basically Pokemon).  Anil Sky,

anil sky – nepali friend, and future band name

one of the Habitat Nepal helpers, has become a good buddy on the job site, riffing with me and taking little seriously as we haul rocks and cement around the house.  He’s a sharp guy and hilarious, and after I told him how much I was interested in finding and acquiring a traditional flute, he brought his in the next day and let me play it.  I was terrible–flutes have never been kind to me–but as Anil saw how much I liked attempting the thing, he took a sharpie to it, and presented it to me as a gift.  Anil Sky, my first Nepali friend: Facebook official!

The Technicians, as they’re called, are Nepali workhorses, hired by the future homeowner and assisted by us volunteers (hacks, really), and are fully capable of building this entire thing themselves.  Are we really helping?  Are we just rich white Americans wanting to pretend we’re doing good, but really just getting in the way of a culture left best to it’s own device?

No, I don’t see it that way.  Habitat for Humanity’s system works with interested home owners on the system of what they call “sweat-equity”.  This means that the interested people looking to acquire a house from Habitat have to put in a significant amount of work themselves on the house being build, right alongside the volunteers.  They they purchase the house directly from Habitat, with a small down payment, and a small mortgage-style monthly payment system.  This way, they are truly attached to the site by virtue of having labored into it, and by having a bit of a halo of help from Habitat up above.

What we are doing is offsetting the cost of the payments (labor, materials) by working for ‘free’ alongside the hired help–those that know what they’re doing.  Yes, the Nepali’s could probably finish the house in two-thirds the time, but we’re providing free labor and empathy, helping people afford a house that they otherwise likely wouldn’t (in this case, Sharmila Pariyar, who survives on Nr500/day), while inspiring the kids with the understanding that the world may be big, but it doesn’t have to be terrifying.

Sharmila and me

Yes, our hotel may be a little ‘wifi-enabled’ compared to the rest of Nepal, yes, our meals may be a little ‘luxuriously nutritional’, yes, our bus may have fans in it that actually work, but all it takes is one look in the faces of the mother and daughter that will be living in the home we’re building, one smile from Siva, or Kris, or Carun, or any of the kids that have play with us day after day, and one massive goodbye wave as we leave the site each afternoon reassures me that we’re doing a good thing here.

Namaste!

where i write, surrounded by annapurnas.

It Takes a Village

The phrase originated from the Nigerian ‘Igbo’ culture as the proverb “Ora na azu nwa,” traditionally understood as the notion that the entire village influences and raises every child, but as I’ve discovered on the first ‘build day’ here in Pokhara, it also applies to building homes and with it, the community.

Annapurna I on our commute. not bad

Along with we intrepid American volunteers, local villagers are hacking away at the latrines and hammering bamboo framing right alongside us.  We are the fair-skinned foreigners, shipped in from a far-away land to lend a helping hand to ensure that the village is vibrantly aware that they are real, that they are taken care of.  Today was the first day of the 2012 Habitat for Humanity Pokhara, Nepal build.

We arrived by bus after a stunning commute through the lake-front village of Pokhara, a sleepy paradise surrounded by the delicately imposing and god-like Himayalas.  Forty-five minutes of driving around, gasping at the beauty of those snow-capped peaks in the distance gave us the sense that we were doing something special, that these sights on our way to our humanity-ordained worksite was truly valid and good.

A number of local Pokhari children watched us unload from our bus, as we looked around, wondering just where we were going.  There was no construction site, no sounds of hammering, or banners to mark the territory.  No, we had to walk down into the valley to find where we were going to spend our next two weeks working.  This was not a problem, as around every bend was a stunning waterfall, or a massive green gorge, or a rushing white river to move us onward.

In the distance, there were a group of villagers, clad in colorful garments alongside smiling children holding flowers.  Yes, they

NAMASTE!

were waiting for us, and indeed we had arrived.  As they lay white scarves over our necks and handed us flowers smiling “Namaste”, Julia started crying, just as she said she would.  This was bigger than I had ever imagined.

We walked over to the build site and sat down as we were briefed on the rules and methods to the project.  The frame was already up, built primarily with bamboo stalks driven into a concrete and stone foundation.  There was a lot of work to do, which was explained to us all as Pokhiri children intently but playfully studied us.

build site before – day 1

Today’s plan was twofold: to install shaved bamboo slats into the walls of the frame, for later mortaring, and to dig up the latrine for the bathroom house, utilizing the stone and dirt to fill up the inside of the house to raise the flooring to the proper height.  My roommate Bob and I instantly started working on the ditch-digging, being, you know, the macho motherfuckers we are.

i been workin’ on the poop ditch / all the live long day

It was tough–I spent a lot of my time slamming a pickaxe into the ground to dig up the rocks and loosen the dirt so we could shovel it into the house.  The Nepali had a great technique for it which I quickly adopted, and we all worked hard together for two and a half hours in the blazing sun, joking, laughing, talking pigeon-English and getting it done.  Water was crucial throughout though there was no refrigeration (you Americans and your refrigeration….).

these freakin’ kids

I spent my down time playing with the local kids, banging on bamboo stalks playing repeat-after-me music with them.    They were so much fun, and though we had absolutely no language in common, we found ourselves mimicking each other and laughing like incredible doofuses.  They liked to climb all over me, and at one point, I rode a bike with one of them piggy-backed on me, racing two other kids on a bike.  We had a blast.

build site after – day 1

As the sun got hotter in the sky, we started to wrap up our work.  The latrine was nearly 5 feet deep, and nearly two thirds of the floor was filled up to the right level.  The team working on weaving the bamboo slats had completed nearly all of the back wall, and the house looked visibly better than when we arrived.  The Nepali were so happy.  Working in digital music never once gave me the sense of accomplishment that we’d already gotten working at this site for barely a day.

We’ve got nearly two weeks to go, and we’ve already made fantastic progress.  If we keep this pace up, we might even finish ahead of schedule.

The Pokhiri Nepali we are working with are so wonderful and gracious and full of the purest and most loving essence of life.  We’re not only building houses here, but building relationships and true community.  I’ve already fallen in love with these kids and want to see them thrive.  We’ve been accepted into their world.

i made them do this

This was such a great idea.