Nepal. Chitwan.
We arrived, in one piece, that’s the main thing. The roads I understood were going to be bumpy, uncomfortable, hot and even pretty scary to drive along but I didn’t quite expect them to be as bad as this. Driving alongside mountains with sheer drops either side and no lanes in sight, literally a free for all, the bigger your vehicle the more chance you have staying alive.
After a gruelling 12-hour bus ride from Kathmandu to Chitwan we have arrived at around 20:00 local time to be greeted by smiles from our home stay hosts. Sanjiv, our point of call and our homestay brother, the mom, the grandpa and Sanjiv’s wife. They live in a beautiful little home in Padampokhari village overlooking acres and acres of rice fields which is rather quite stunning. The house is a beautiful little shack located at the end of a long dirt road. It’s a simple home, containing a kitchen, a living area, a few bedrooms, one toilet and one shower with no hot water. After they showed us to our room they served us dinner which was exactly what I needed as I hadn’t eaten anything since a pancake which was at 06:00am that morning. It was Dal Bhat which is white rice covered in some lentils, alongside it was greens, a mild curry sauce that had beautifully tender potatoes and some ice-cold water, it was delicious. They told us they removed the spice as they didn’t think we could handle it so we’ve asked them to increase the level of spicy every day until we end up sweating. Couldn’t help but feel rude as after dinner they wanted us to rest and leave the dishes, only the brother speaks good English thus showing appreciation for the food and hospitality is tough, but she seemed happy as that smile she greeted us with never left her face. It was a simple evening after dinner, cold shower and into bed. Chitwan was muggy, very humid and still very warm even at around 21:00, so I was anxious to see what tomorrow was going to bring.
It was start of the construction volunteering program and we were up ready and drinking their specialty tea (best tea I’ve ever tasted, and I’m British) at 6:20am ready to leave for work at 6:30am. Sanjiv gave us an extra 30 minutes this morning as we had a long day before, so going forward we were expected to be ready to leave at 6:00am – thanks Sanjiv. As expected, it was HOT, definitely going to be the hottest I’ve ever been, slightly nervous as I may melt before heading off to Pokhara in a four weeks’ time. It’s an early rise to allow us to get some work done before the sun comes out making it near impossible to work. Work was to be split up into a few chunks: 06:30-09:30 was work time, 09:30-10:00 was breakfast, which was to be either noodles or spicy chickpeas with one boiled egg, and 11:30 was lunch followed by a rest until 15:00-18:00 where we would begin work again when the cooler evening air came. This schedule was screaming to me, 'it’s going to be hot so you boys better prepare.'
The project we are working on is for locals that live in this pretty remote village. The aim is to build a wall on a section of land they have which will host two gates, one to a section that leads up to a small Hindu temple where they can worship their God. The second section is going to be a small area where they are able to meditate and practice yoga. It’s great to see the need for these things in such a remote area as there isn’t much going on at all, with these efforts you can see they are just trying to be a normal village and stay true to their values. However, something they do have that isn’t normal is the community they’ve built, it’s above average with everyone helping out for one another. Just spending a few days on the construction site, you get locals coming over to offer a help in hand or explain to you in broken English how appreciative they are that we are adding to their small but valued society.
There is a huge importance associated with building or even just marking out where the wall is going to be as the longer unattended land is there for the more likely the government will purchase it, unfortunately resulting in the locals being unable to use or inhabit this land. That’s why our arrival was greeted with smiles all round.
The Construction Project.
I’ve never done any labouring before, I’ve spent last 5 years sat behind a computer working on my exquisite touch typing so being thrown in to the deep end where I’d be doing construction in 30-degree heat where each task here is done by hand or using hand-made tools it was going to be a ‘fun’ experience that’s for sure.
It started with a huge pile of rocks that were to form the base of the wall, these were conveniently located away from where they were needed so they had to be moved to the correct location. This was followed by digging rectangular trenches around 3ft deep which was to hold the walls, we then dug square holes around 5ft deep which was to hold the pillars for the gates. Doing this in the heat was tough, I thought sun stroke was coming already and this was the first day. I’ve gone from sitting in front of my fireplace at home with a hot drink to digging holes in shorts and a t-shirt in scorching sunshine with a waterfall of sweat dripping off my nose. The trenches didn’t come easy though, if you weren’t battling digging in the direct sunlight you were battling the enormous tree roots which were conveniently located in the trench I was tasked to dig.
Up next, we needed to create the vertical rectangular pillars that were going to hold the gates. The skeleton of the pillars was created out of 4 rebar rods. To get these to the size we wanted we used a tape measure with that trusty Nepali eye and a hack saw to get them all the same size. The method behind sawing these rods was ludicrous, the Nepali construction guys didn’t have the necessary apparatus to secure the rods in place to be able to accurately cut them so they used their feet to hold them in place, either side of their big toes and that’s when they began to saw. My anxiety went through the roof…. His big toe was inches away to becoming amputated. Time for a walk as I didn’t want to witness what could have been a scene out of the Saw movie.
As you’d expect once we ran out of gravel, rocks and sand, so we’d need more, right? Obviously, this wasn’t to then be delivered to our doorstep as this would be to easy… To get more we had to go what was about a 10-minute walk from the construction site to dig up and bag all the gravel, rocks and sand we needed to help with the cement mixture. It took us a couple of hours to bag up a whole load of resources before heading back to the site. Just when you thought the hard part was over we then had to transport the heavy bags from the back of this tractor to where we intended to separate but then mix up the resources to create the cement, which the Nepali guys referred to as Masala, a word that has been used every day in Nepal without fail.
It was now time to start pouring the cement into the trenches filled with gravel and rocks. We marked out where the cement was to be poured re-using old wooden pillars. This was when we had to mix up the sand, water and cement powder over and over again to get the correct consistency. This was a tedious and time-consuming task, I seemed to somehow secure the shovel as a permanent extension to my hands so waking up the next day with a sore back I was really starting to show my old age of 23. Whilst we waited for this cement to dry there was an old pillar that had fallen into the 5ft square hole which needed to be removed, no easy task. When we first tried to move it we quickly realised this thing must weigh at least a tonne and was in the most awkward shape that even if it was considerably lighter moving it was going to be an issue. After a number of failed attempts and some snapped rope it was back to the drawing board. This thing was far too heavy to move so we took a sledge hammer to the bottom of it for around an hour, a horrible task that one of the Nepali guys took out on his own as the boss man didn’t approve of us using the sledge hammer. When the new rope arrived we plaited it to increase the strength and then wrapped it round the bottom of the pillar, myself and David were inside the pit whilst the others were on the outside holding the ropes. Success. First time and it was out, what a relief.
Now all the 4 5ft holes were empty it was time to start placing the 4 pillars into them and measure them up so they would stand central and straight. The method was a good one, once they were placed into the holes we tied 4 bits of rope to each side of the pillar and pulled them in separate directions. The Nepali workers used a plum-bob to measure the pillars and ensure they were pointing straight up, once the nod of satisfaction from the Dope hat guy it was time to securely tie the rope. More rocks were added to the base of the pillar once it was in the correct position and some cement was poured in amongst the rocks to hold it in vertically in place.
We now needed to create the boundary for the pillars so we could pour cement into it and wait for it to dry. These Nepali construction workers re-use everything! We walked to a house about a 5-minute walk away from the site and collected slabs of wood, previously used for the same sort of thing as there were signs of old bits of cement on them. They keep the nails they find in older bits of wood and also re-use these. We couldn’t do it all in one sitting, so we did the bottom half first allowed it to dry and then added the top half after. The top half was trickier as we had to secure this into place using longer slabs of wood as illustrated by the pictures; again we had to use the plum-bob to make sure these top halves of the pillars were aligned with the bottom.
Whilst this was going on some of the team were busy progressing the wall so by the time the Tihar Festival came around we were leaving the construction site with all the pillars drying and the majority of the wall in place, a sense of achievement was already begging to take place. A well-deserved 4-day break to celebrate Diwali was due!
Festival time was over and it was back to work. First day back consisted of finishing up the wall and removing the wooden surroundings from the pillars to check everything had dried correctly. The first milestone was reached. The wall was up, the pillars were in place, a real structure was beginning to take place, first phase was done. The second phase was now to begin which was to include the plastering of the walls and building of the flower beds. With not even a week left it was just beginning to dawn on me that my time in Chitwan was slowly coming to an end.
Back to digging, oh the digging… but thankfully it was now back end of October so the weather had cooled down dramatically so I wasn’t going to be repeating the horrific first day where we were asked to dig 5ft holes which saw me wake up in a right angle which felt permanent. This was pretty tame in comparison, 6 inch trenches just in front of the recently built wall. Everything we did seemed to follow the same pattern as before, once the trenches were dug we would fill them with gravel mud and water to form a sturdier foundation for the flower bed wall to be built. As well as this we would also use the Nepali equipment to ensure that the trenches were straight and that they were dug evenly either side of the guide. Whilst the work was going on there were parts of the pillar that needed tweaking. Where we had created the wooden surroundings, and poured the cement there were parts that had dried leaving little bits that sticking out. Here we needed to use a hammer and chisel to carve the rocks to make them flush with the rest of the pillar.
Before the plaster could be thrown on the wall we needed to first coat it with a watery cement mixture, this was to allow whatever plaster we put onto the wall to stick. Once the wall was coated and had a gorgeous grey colour we began throwing the mixture at the wall which left a lumpy texture as you can see from the pictures. The wall started to look more and more lumpy, not very aesthetically pleasing. But once it was lumpy it was slowly followed by us smoothing it out which gave the wall a professional look; if I do say so myself.
The wall now looked good, a 9-5 office boy, with help, has been able to get his hands dirty whilst learning new skills to create a real surrounding for the temple, I definitely had a sense of achievement already. Dad would definitely be proud too as i was never trusted with a paint brush let alone building a wall. 😉
The flower bed was next. I learnt that bricks in Nepal are rather expensive and are seen as gold dust, therefore the Nepali guys re-used materials they already had to help build the flower bed wall rather than use just the bricks. This worked in our favour, well that’s what we thought, as the concrete slabs we were going to use allowed us to create the wall at a much faster pace as they much larger than the bricks. Nonetheless, we hit an issue. Once the flower bed wall was up we used the tools again to check whether it was level, which to our surprise (not much of a surprise really) it wasn’t. Down it came. Instead we had to use very thick layers of cement as the trenches, concrete slabs and bricks all combined did not leave it straight all the way across. This was the first issue we actually faced where we had done something that was not right, I suppose that can be taken as a positive considering the groups construction background.
It was apparent that I wasn’t going to finish the wall as it was now my last day and there was still a considerable amount of work to be done, it was disappointing knowing I wasn’t going to see the wall to its bitter end, however having spent four weeks here and seeing where we had come from I was proud of what was already achieved. As the bulk of the work was done it was done the last day consisted of creating masala for the plaster to be morphed around the flower bed wall. There isn’t really much to say here other than it was slow work. We had to make sure it was perfectly level all the way across the wall, it was starting to look very professional once it was all in place.
That was it, my first project in Nepal was over. I had spent 4 weeks in Chitwan with my amazing host family and have managed to be a part of a team that had successfully began building a wall around the village temple. It was hard work in the heat but each completed day was a rewarding day as every day progress was seen. Even despite it being frustrating on the construction site not being able to speak to our Nepali co-workers a beautiful friendship was formed. As there was no fluent conversation amongst us it left us using just the basics. Pointing, hand gestures and just the presences of the other individual. This would sometimes speak a thousand words as the feel you would get from them, especially if you weren’t doing something right, was known. I enjoyed this though, as someone recently told me it forces you to acknowledge people’s effort and presence rather than rely on just words. People are forced to communicate in the only way they know how and even using just the basics like pointing, hand gestures or basic Nepali/English it shows you are really trying to help achieve that same goal, which is rather quite beautiful that despite the frustration we keep trying. Sometimes the language barrier brings out the best in you as you’re really digging deep to keep progressing and moving forward as a team. Everyone can see the effort being put in which is why these friendships were formed, actions do speak louder than words in this scenario. Looking back at it now, even with the language barrier, some of the funniest moments I had in Chitwan were with the Nepali guys on the construction site.
I hope they get more volunteers at amazing village so they can finish off the wall we have started, it’s been a hard but fun four weeks of work and I am grateful for being accepted as a local in the community whilst I was there.
Please see below a simple video i made of my time on the project, i hope you enjoy!