Day 6: More Rebar and Concrete

Today's journey to the build site was not so adventurous, although we still had to navigate through the market area...this time we had a pretty good idea what to expect.  We saw the typical sights like motorbikes carrying everything from mattresses, 10-12 cases of beer and of course a basket of ducks...how else would ducks be transported!

We arrived at the build site by 9:15am...just in time to have a water buffalo walk by us... and decided to pretty much stay in our original groups.  Today we spent most of the morning working on rebar.  I started out tying rebar in a square base, but as you know tying rebar is not my most advanced skill, so I then moved to cutting metal to be bent.  This doesn't really sound too difficult, but the roll of metal we are required to cut is very heavy and needs to be moved in a circular motion every time you cut a hunk of metal and that can make you very hot...what am I saying, sitting still can make you very hot in Vietnam!

By break, we had cut 120 pieces of metal in various sizes and by noon we had straightened all the pieces so they could then be bent into small rectangles.  This was definitely a group effort with Steve bending metal, Liz, Matt and I straightening.  It felt much less hot today since the sun was not out much...I think it was 34 degrees today...but I was still ready for a nap at lunch time.  Today we also had some duck for lunch...tried a bit until I heard a few people say they saw them plucking feathers from the duck when we came today.  I had a bit of a nap after lunch and when I got I realized that everyone except Liz and Lise...who were still asleep...had left and gone back to work.  This is except Jennifer who was having her toenails painted for 20,000VD ($1)...bright green at that.

The afternoon was all about mixing concrete.  This is really back breaking work if you need to mix the actual mixture of cement, gravel and sand....I can't do it, but Steve and Matt did a great job even though I at one point they were exhausted.  Over the next three hours we mixed 3 batches of concrete and lugged them to the 10 locations around the foundation where large beams will be erected to support the house.  By the end of the day, the other half of the team came to help...thank god ....and the home owners were also helping us...four people who are not used to this kind of work is really not enough larbour.  We also had some fresh coconut juice and skin to eat thanks to our foreman who cut them open with a machete.

Speaking of labour we were told today by our Habitat leads that yesterday some of the neighbours were wondering how the homeowners were able to hire foreigners to help build their home since they would be so expensive.  They were quite surprised to hear we were there as volunteers and very appreciative of our efforts.  In fact we seem to be getting big and big crowds each day of everyone from kids to adults sitting around watching us work.  Apparently there are a number of men around because it is not time to plant the rice yet, so this is their slow time of year.

 By 4:30pm we were cleaned up....now that's all relative...and headed back to our hotel.  On the way we stopped to let some people buy kits...people seem to be out every night flying kits and then met for dinner around 6:30pm.  Now we thought we knew where we were to go for dinner, but apparently not.  Instead of going to the restaurant we went to for dinner the first night we arrived, we went to the place we had lunch on the first day....no wonder the wait staff had nothing waiting for us and didn't understand what we were asking for.  After some discussion, Jennifer ended up ordering dinner for us and we had a great meal.  Unfortunately on our way back to the hotel we ran into Ngan looking for us on her motorbike because we didn't arrive at the restaurant...who knew I would need to take the emergency phone with me to lunch, but if we had we would have avoided all this confusion.

Once we got back to the hotel, a few of us went up to the guys room had a beer, chatted and headed back to our rooms around 9pm.  The morning comes early here, so I'm heading to bed soon and looking forward to our final full day at the build site.

Until tomorrow...
Lisa