Tuesday Jan. 29th 2008

Day 4: The Second Build Day


I think we will be glad that we managed six houses yesterday. We were only left with four houses complete our build.

Did I mention the blackouts? Fairly regular lapses in electrical can come at inconvenient times. One of our team, who was lucky enough to have hot water in his room, was caught mid-shower by the latest outage. I guess it is a regular thing here, nobody seems to pay much attention, (except someone with shampoo in his hair).

I must admit, I am getting a little tired of the ‘set-breakfast’….exactly the same thing each
morning, cold egg thing and all.


The Meghan Incident:

We were all prepped to leave for today’s build, we did a fast head count and within five minutes we were down the road. We only discovered that Meg was missing after everyone got out of the vans in the village. OOPS.

Today’s drive was a little rougher for me that it was yesterday. By the time we navigated the last 10 km of potholes I was a little green under the gills. No matter, we split into our teams, and started hammering. After the first house was done I was feeling a little worse, so stayed off the ladder and did both feet planted firmly on the ground stuff. At the third house it really hit me; had to sit out. Fell asleep sitting up, woke up, and left to upchuck in quieter climes. Almost made it out of the lot by the time breakfast decided to re-appear. Taking the ‘any port in a storm’ rule to heart, I spotted a pile of lumber underneath a small tree with some shade.

This is something I will always remember. Within a minute of going prone, someone from inside an ‘old house’ who we had built for, brought me out a small pillow, the kind gesture really hit home. They sure don’t have many possessions, but they possess more than many in other areas.

How nice was that.

I think I was out of commission for a half hour or so, but when I heard the hammering stop, I headed over to the last house in time for the official handover. It feels pretty damn good.

Thanks to the rest of the team for plugging away while the ‘team leader’ was temporarily out of commission.

Drive back relatively uneventful other than one more upchuck stop by a Dugong sign. Darn near made it all the way back to Kep.

Save the Dugong.

This is the last night that everyone will be together, so we are having a team dinner right by the sea-front in Kep.

In addition to Srei, we had one other Tabitha staff with us, Thom, who runs the provincial ‘office’ for Tabitha. There were also our 2 van drivers. I guess our team really had 18 members, because everyone pitched in on the build.

Chillin’ tomorrow.