Building a House in Kampot

During my stay in Kampot I met some people at my guesthouse who invited me to come help build a house for a woman and her family out in the provinces.  I thought it sounded like a great way to spend the day so I hopped on the back of a motorbike and off we went.  The person organizing the construction was a woman named Babs who runs two schools in the rice fields for the children of the farmers.  She told me that one of her students came in asking for rice because he was so hungry.  She asked him to take her to his home and when she saw the state of it decided that something needed to be done.

I found the process of building a house to be quite fun.  The bamboo framework had already been laid out so our job was to build the walls.  You start by weaving bamboo leaves together in small segments like in the picture below:

Next, you arrange the segments of leaves into lines and tie them to the framework using wire and a special wire tying technique that was taught to us.  The area can get very windy so we had to be sure that the wall could resist the forces of nature.  Another important thing to consider was the rain, so the lines of leaves had to be placed close together so that they overlapped at the thickest point.

Here you can see the building of a table using strips of bamboo nailed to more bamboo.

Here is a picture of the inside of the house.  As you can see it is very minimal, a bed, a table, rice, water...

...and the most important, a chicken.

 New friends carrying more bamboo to finish the table.

After lots of work a refreshing beverage was in order, so one of the locals climbed up the coconut tree with a machete and chopped us down a treat.

 

The finished wall and entire house at the end of the day.

Before leaving, Babs (standing next to me) had us hold up a sign the children from her school had made wishing all the followers of her blog a Merry Christmas.  I took this picture from her blog, which you can be seen here: http://cambobabs.skynetblogs.be/

I enjoyed this day very much and was in the best of company.  It's beautiful to think that giving just a days time can make an immense difference in someone's life, even just an hour accomplished so much with all of us working together.

But most rewarding of all was the beautiful feet tan I received from wearing Toms in the sun all day.  What a beautiful sight no?

Then back to Phnom Penh for a delightfully polluted sunset.