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Published: December 7th 2009
Week 2 at BJT Lasallian College began much more calmly than our first week. After a very hectic weekend together, we said good bye to our Singaporean friends on Monday night, exchanging email addresses and taking last photographs together before waving them off in the school bus.
We were able to get into more of a routine this week. Our day starts at 8 so that we can have breakfast and be ‘booted up’, as Larry has coined the term, by 8.55 am. The day is broken up into 3 shifts of an hour and a half. It may not seem like much but working in 35+ degree heat and using muscles that are unfamiliar to us each day has begun to take its toll. I think we are definitely feeling tired. I had to wake half the boys for breakfast this morning!!
When Chas told us that they had worked for an hour and half before having a half hour break, we did wonder why? Surely we are much tougher! Were we mistaken! The lack of equipment means that the labour is manual, in the truest sense of the word. Sand is carried up flights of stairs in canvas sacks. Two people pack the sacks, one person ferries them to the stairs where there are two people on the stairs to shift them to the top and from there it is passed along the corridor to the room.
Bricks are carried on circular metal trays. The workers laugh amongst themselves at us because we refuse to carry more than 4 bricks at a time and will not carry them on our heads or shoulders. Sometimes if the workers are using the tins, we carry bricks by hand…two at a time…or three, depending on how energetic we feel. Our chain gang seems to work best for this.
Gravel is probably the collective least favourite job for all the De La Coolies. This was Wednesday’s task and involved raking gravel which had been strewn across the ground and dug up into bags. It seems that there is no rhyme or reason to the tasks we do but the boys are definitely ammenable to all that is thrown their way. As one group got a rhythm and pace going, the workers would come and shout at us to take the smaller gravel or take it from this pile or don’t touch this pile…i
The manager arrives on his motorcycle each morning and comes up to do an inspection. One worker is mute but is able to motion to us to tell us what to do. He’s actually quite sweet and I’ve taught him to do ‘thumbs up’ when any of us interprets what he wants us to do correctly. He waves at us each morning and gives us jobs to do. Larry took a photograph of me and the mute guy yesterday. He’s pretty short, only coming up to my shoulder. He grabbed the camera from Larry and took it to show the rest of the workers. Another worker has taken to us and named each of the boys after Hollywood film stars. I think Larry was quite chuffed to be called Bruce Willis. He calls Barry the Indonesian or Jet Li and Sean Corcoran is Harry Potter...
By 9.30, the rest of the workers arrive. At this time, Larry and I have done our own inspection of what was completed the day before and decided on a task to occupy us until there is something else to do. The language barrier is difficult so lots sign language is used, pointing and nodding.
Such a building I would think needs a certain sense of order and organization, but as I’ve learnt in the short time I’ve been in India, there is no such thing. On Tuesday we were moving bricks from a pile nearest the most workable stairs and mid way though, the manager indicated that we were to abandon this pile of bricks and take bricks from another pile that had just been delivered. It was at the edge of the worksite and the trek from this pile was made all the more difficult by a lack of stairs up onto the lower level, just a very steep pile of sand and dirt. The boys tried it this way before Marcus, one of our Adelaide boys, thought up a make shift ramp with two logs of wood lay down on the sand and wooden planks placed over them. It bowed in the middle and I was worried that the constant walking up and down it would strain the logs and eventually snap. This was quickly solved by Marcus, future civil engineer and Alex who built up a tower of bricks underneath the middle part so it was more stable. The mute guy came to see what we were doing when we all stopped carrying our bricks and crowded round. He motioned that he was worried we would trip and crack our head open. But its actually much better and even the workers have begun to use the ramp...
On Monday morning, we saw a concrete circle about 20 centimeters thick and about a metre wide in diameter, with bricks keeping it in place. This was one obstacle which became very annoying to step over. It’s right on the edge of the floor and is easy to trip over the bricks. This morning, the corridor was filled with a pile of bricks, sand and gravel outside each room as well as the concrete circle became quite the obstacle course. The workers indicated they wanted bricks to be carried up, but getting through the piles on the floor, doorframes tied into place by wooden logs, the mystifying concrete circle, slippery wet concrete and 12 workers scampering all over the place became....well...unsafe.
Larry and I put a halt to this and redirected our crew of Coolies to the longer trek, at least we had the ramp…and the alphabet game…But then!! We were moved again as Marcus was put on a concrete ledge on the second story and given a bucket and rope as a pulley system of sorts to bring bricks up to the second story. And infuriatingly, the concrete circle which had mystifyed us all this week (and annoyed some of us) so much this week was being chipped away at and destroyed. This afternoon it was gone!! And we will never know what it was for or why it was put there...
We’ve adopted plenty of systems to cater for each job that we have and games to pass the time. Santiago came up with a game to keep us entertained on Thursday after we had been doing the same thing for the last two days. Each time we had to pass a pile of bricks onto someone, we had to say a word beginning with the letter ‘A’ and so on. It got very silly by the time we got to ‘S’ with spaghetti and stupidity. Today Barry and Larry were calling out countries and we had to think of the capital city of each. It did make the last hour go much faster. Although the work is monotonous, it is refreshing after such a hectic year.
Our days passed quickly enough but seemed long at the same time. Now it's Friday night and the boys taken an auto into the nearest big town Nandigama. A few of them have decided to adopt the worker’s dress style and buy dhotis. Brother Victor is going to show them how to tie the properly. And I will be there to take photos! Ange
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Chris and Chas
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OH&S?
HI Everyone, It sounds as if the obstacles are becoming more amazing!. The games sound fun and you are right they help to pass the time, help forget about the heat and the hunger pangs as lunchtime nears. What is the favourite dish of the group?Have any of you tried the curd with your meals? What about the soccer match?Has that taken place yet? Br Victor loves nothing better than a competitive match, so suggest it to him. Take Care, Chris and Chas