Day 1

What a day! It takes about 30 minutes to get to the project site, through traffic and busy city streets, motor bikes and more motor bikes. But the traffic became less as we reached the edge of town, the buildings became smaller, the cars were replaced by push bikes, but the motor bikes were still buzzing around. How many people fit on a motor bike? At least six, but it is possible that there could be more!
We met our families at the build site, and introduced ourselves (with our ages) to the skilled workers, construction supervisor and a whole lot of other workers. Our age was important for the Cambodian people to understand, they show respect to older people - and some of us were due respect!

John, the construction supervisor, gave us a bit of a briefing and the teams were matched with a family. Martin was leading one team and Greg the other team (both were our construction experts!). Martin's team (Mike, Sean, Dan, Chris) were to help Met Saren a 64 year old widow. Greg's team (Gerry, Tony, Marie, Jodie & Andy) were building with Pol Sophea and Pan Chanthy, a married couple.

Pol and Pan worked hard all day, they would be back on Sunday to do some more, as they both had to work on the other days. We would meet with them on our last day for a celebration.

It was hot, hard work. Shoveling sand, carrying buckets of concrete. Our tasks on day one were to complete the foundations and start to fill in the sub-floor.

Pol & Pan's home was also ready for some support columns that were formed by the skilled workers and then filled with concrete by us all - with bucket lines. Martin's team started the day with buckets of concrete to fill the foundations and then started to fill the sub-floor with sand.

Lunch was at a local "resort", Jodie slept in the hammock, recovering from the mornings events!
The following video clips may help you understand just what we are doing! The first and fourth parts are by me Greg Hill. The second and third were filmed by Jodie Rutherford and the last was filmed by Vitey, our Habitat Global Village coordinator.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5