Cambodia - Starting Our Buildling

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On our first night in Battambang we had a meeting with the Habitat Staff. There we learned a few Khmer pleasantries and customs. The language is very difficult for most of our American team . The Khmer script is unidentifiable. The Latin versions use phonetics that don’t match our expectations. Finally, we are unable to discern the nuances of phonetics. Communication without our translators would be most difficult.

The Habitat team shared data about the demographics and economic situation in the country. Unemployment is extraordinarily low(0.3%). But what constitutes employment is meager at best. The average family earns less than $100 USD per month. Others subsist on only $30/month.

Monday was out first day on the build site. We began our day with an introduction of our partner families. We are building two homes. One for Mr. & Mrs. Song on their 5 children. The other for Mrs. Syreno and her family. She has 4 children and a disabled husband. Her 15 year old son is mentally handicapped and unable to contribute to the household. Our team was introduced to the families. Each shared their gratitude for our traveling all the way from the other side of the world to help build their houses. Mrs. Song’s emotions were evident and touched most everyone on our team.

We divided into three groups, one for each house and a third team to make the compressed earth brick. Day one I worked on the brick making team. This was a completely different process than making bricks on other Habitat builds. We sifted hundreds of pounds of sand to the appropriate mesh, mixed with a small amount of concrete and then place in a machine which compressed the mixture into Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB). The process was methodical and enjoyable. The job of sifting the sand was my favorite as it reminded me of cooking. However, there were other tasks that involved filling the wheel barrels with sand and carrying the CEB to the drying racks. We can only produce about 500 blocks in a day. It takes 3500 blocks to complete a home.

The remainder of our team began construction on the walls of both homes. The sun was hot. A couple of our team members were struggling with the heat. Hydration and shade were our friends. I am happy to say, day one of building was labeled a success by all.

I am struggling to load photos into the blog.

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