Build Day two

Second day of the building and some of the highlights (if you want to call them that ) included finding a snake in a pile of bricks and trying to sneak good bricks out of the brick factory when were only allowed to take broken half bricks.

House One

We were dropped off by the bus a little bit shorter than we normally would have as there was a ceremony going on in the centre of the track. The purpose of the ceremony was to keep evil spirits away from the village (I hope they weren't referring to us). There was a chicken with its legs tied up which appears was going to be part of the process, and we weren't keen on witnessing that.

Temperatures in the mid thirties today. Our house owners have two young sons, but there are a lot of people who seem to be hanging around, do its difficult to know who will be living in the house when it's finished.

Today we walked about 20min to a brick kiln to load a truck with bricks for the house, you guessed it, by hand. The men who work at the kiln, and there are lots of them, sit in the shade and watch us. The wife of our house is there with us though pitching in and keeping an eye on quality. We were supposed to get a second load of bricks after lunch but the organisation was not so good on the kilns part, having double booked there truck we could have sat and waited for an hour, but that's not the kiwi way, do we arranged to do it first thing in the morning.

Our goal for the day was to finish moving all the rock to the building site which we achieved. However it was a pretty tired and weary team that trudged the 20 min back to the bus where we were again greeted with a cup of chia.

House Two

Namaste from Ann Owen, at the time of writing its 35 degrees so I'm sitting in the bus out of the sun as a wire these notes. We are building a mud brick house in the middle of a group of houses. Chickens run about, goats and a cow are tethered eating dry fodder.

We have made great progress on our house today, the stairs are currently being made out of timber, bricks are being made about 50m away and carried to the site. I have been lifting up bricks and handing up containers of "mortar" - soil mixed with water in a pit next to the house. My husband Dave is also handing up bricks. Yesterday I was standing knee deep mixing the mortar. The hospitality of the Nepalese people here has bee amazing.