By Hugh M and Mia
Today, we all worked together for Day 2 of the house build, with each person in our group being given different roles in the house. While yesterday focused on setting up the frame of the house and cutting up bamboo for a variety of roles, today we played a more active role in assembling the house itself.
Our group awoke at around 6am to get ready for breakfast, which is a necessity for a hard-working day. Breakfast consisted of fried rice which is abnormal in a traditional western breakfast. By 7:45, everyone’s bags were packed, sunscreen was on, water bottles were filled up with water and Hydrolyte, and were we ready to commence our one hour walk to the village. As we walked to our destination we had the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful Vietnamese country side. The limestone mountains looming amongst the clouds and the vast countryside filled with rice fields stretch across the land. Later that morning we arrived in the village and were greeted by the community again. The builders had already started for the day when we arrived but we all just jumped straight in and tried to finish up our jobs from yesterday. Our group guide, Hoang, told us that we were waiting upon a truck carrying leaves required for the roof and then the whole group walked up and down the road carrying the palm leaves towards the house.
Next we began to put the roof in place. We split into pairs and began passing leaves up to the workers on the roof. There was one person holding a long bamboo stick, while the other person placed a set of leaves at the end of the stick. The person holding the stick pushed it up to the roof to the workers who would then attach them to the roof. The job of pushing up the bamboo stick was exhausting to say the least! Each pair fell into their own rhythm and we got the job done at a good pace. While this was happening many people were continuing to chop the bamboo for the floor. Once that job was finished, and we had had another yummy lunchbox lunch, many students, along with workers, were sent up the nail the floorboards into the house. As this was happening, there were people doing lots of different jobs: moving timber boards from the truck to the house, painting a canvas to go inside the house and sweeping up the dust and rubbish to set up for the volleyball match. They swept the floor with brooms made of leaves and re-painted the lines of the court. During this experience, we had to learn things from the local villagers. This proved tough as we did not speak the same language, so most of the communication was done through hand signals and pointing. This was actually really interesting to experience and surprising that it ended up being so easy to understand what they wanted us to do.
Ultimately, today was hard work but rewarding to assist in bettering the life of needy family. To further the family’s wellbeing as a group we have decided to each donate an extra 250,000 dong on top of our fundraising to purchase a female cow for the family. This is more important than one might think because Vietnamese people treat cows and buffalos as pets more than cats and dogs. The cow will be able to raise calves that can be sold or used for work in the village, potentially providing the family with money at some point in the future when it might be needed.
