Habitat Build 17th- March-2012

On the 17th- Match-2012 we met early morning at school. We left the school campus at 7:30 and after an hour drive we arrived at our building site. This was my second built and like the last one when we arrived we had a small snack and then began the hard work. On this build the floor from inside the houses were already destroyed so our job was to mix the cement and carry into the house. This proved to me much more challenging that it seems. Right now in Sri Lanka it is the hottest time of the year so by around 11 am we were all worn out from being in the sun. Work was done much slower on this build since the heat really took allot of our energy. We would take allot of short water breaks in order to stay hydrated and try and work in the shade as much as possible. Even though the conditions in this build were harder, I enjoyed this build more reason being we got to work more and we felt needed but in the last built several construction workers were helping out as well so work was limited. In this build we worked collaboratively since we were all tired and worn out from the heat, we created a line from the cement mixing ground to the house in order to pass on the buckets of cement from one person to the other, this didn’t require us to move allot and we worked much faster like this. I helped out with mixing the cement and flattening the soil ground from the inside of another house in order for the floor to be ready for the cement.
This plays a role in global importance since Sri Lanka in many ways is still underdeveloped; many people live in old houses.  By joining this group I am able to help construct and repair the houses that these people live in. Through this I feel as if I am first hand making a difference instead of donating money.

Habitat Build !

On Saturday 25th of February I went on my first built for the new after school CAS group that i have joined this year. I volunteered along with four other students to go on Saturday morning at 7:30 to Negombo in order to help the community there building houses. After an hour’s drive we arrived at our destination. After a short breakfast at one of the local’s house we began working. At first I was placed in a group with Ahmad from grade 11 to help a local build the walls to a new room in his house. We worked for about 2 hours, sawing wood and hammering nails and completed 2 walls. At around 11 we left that group since there were too many workers in that sight so we weren’t really helping much towards the end. We joined the rest of the group and helped then destroy the floor to a house in order to fill it up with cement. The job which I found most challenging that day was carrying the buckets of cement from the mixing site to the room; in the mid-day sun combined with muscle ache and sandflies was actually challenging to stay concentrated on the work. We stayed working on the floor for the rest of the afternoon eventually leaving the building site at around 2:45.

Through this built I learned new skills, since I’ve never done construction work before as intense as this. The locals from my first site with Ahmad showed me how to saw a wooden plank correctly. In this built everyone was working collaboratively with each other. At one point the bucket was paced from person to person from the mixing site to the room in order to avoid harder labor. Although this built required me to wake up at 7 in the morning on a Saturday which is challenging for me, I would do the same over again as the day resulted to be quite fun.