Rockin4Tabitha build - Day 1

Yesterday, we packed up into a van for the ride north to Preah Vihear province.  For most, Preah Vihear brings to mind the dispute over a temple which sits about 50 km north the capital, Tbeang Meanchey, along the Thai-Cambodian border.  Both Thais and Khmers claim ownership of the temple and over which there has been some violent military exchanges in the past.  Currently, you are more likely to find both the Thais and Khmers sitting around sharing their lunch and playing cards than lobbing grenades and exchanging fire with each other.  It's a political chess-match within an area that has, at times in history, swamped hands multiple times between the two countries.  

The drive to Tbeang Meanchey tookabout 7 hours along a highway strewn with pot holes and bridge work until the town of Khampong Thom.  After lunch at a large Khmer-Chinese restaurant, we headed north again, another 2.5 hours until the small town of Tbeang Meachchey.  I must admit, I missed most of the drive.  I had woken up feeling not entirely 100%, slightly off and queasy a bit weak.  So sitting in a van for 6 hours was a struggle.  I didn't eat much at lunch and the bumpy road was not helping with the unease in my head and stomach.  I wound up taking a Gravol and sleeping a good 2 hours of the last leg of the trip.  I don't usually get affected by travel, but yesterday was an exception.

We arrived in Tbeang Meanchey, essentially 4 streets in a grid pattern, and are staying at the Malop Trosek Guesthouse.  Being Chinese New Year, we immediately recognized a problem - NOTHING is open in town.  The restaurant at our hotel, which apparently has excellent food, is closed until tomorrow.  The majority of the shops are closed.  The major question - what about breakfast?  Skipping breakfast on a build day is not an option.  We had picked up baguettes and had fillings for them prior to arriving.  It was looking more and more like baguettes were going to be breakfast and lunch.  We did an emergency run to the Tela gas station down the road and stocked up on Nescafe canned cold coffee and additional snack-type items.  Luckily, Pon, the Tabitha staff member who is charged with caring for all these silly foreigners who think breakfast and coffee is important, managed to convince the restaurant down the road to open for breakfast.  Woo hoo!!

We had a 2 hour break after the drive and before supper so I tried to rest.  During this time, I managed to come up feverish - chills, shakes, aches, nausea and all.  It is a very odd sensation to be cold and have goose bumps when it is 32 deg C outside!!  I very, very rarely get fevers so you can imagine the creative, and mostly fatal, thoughts that crossed my mind - Dengue Fever, malaria, appendicitis, etc., any of which are actually a possibility!  That said, this team leader was NOT a happy camper for the day.  I did go for supper, just to get some soup into my body, and was not the most social of people while I considered my impending death in a local hospital of some foreign, incurable disease.  I wound up coming back to the hotel at 8:30pm, dosed myself with aspirin, Gravol, lots of electrolytes and got into bed.  It was a very long, sweaty night as my body decided to sweat itself out.  I woke feeling a bit better, at least free of the fever, only still achy and feeling slightly nauseated.  But the show must go on, right?  Houses to build!!  I think I will name this disease after our regular team leader and call it the Bob Syndrome.  :)  

We had breakfast at 6:30am (hard for a non-morning person!) at Tbeang Phnom, the same restaurant in which we ate supper last night - omlettes, awesome coffee with condensed milk, and baguettes.  Then it was back into the van and back south for a 1 hour drive to the village where we would be building, with a stop along the way for more water.  It's always better to have more water than too little and I definitely had concerns about the quota that Pon had put into the back of the van.  It's amazing how much water you consume in a day of house building, and how little of that actually leaves your body!!

Preah Vihear province reminds me of Ratanakiri - the same elevation, similar terrain, same vegetation, but more real outcrop (having 2 geologists in the van does mean that geology will be spoken and rocks will be looked at and picked up!  more on that later).  The main crops appear to be cassava (taro) and bananas.  We saw a lot of cassava plantations in and around Ban Lung as well, along with cashew and rubber.  

The Tabitha Foundation is a newcomer to Preah Vihear - we are only the 2nd group to have built in this province, the first being Bob and Wendy with Rockin4Tabitha last year when they built 15 houses.  It's a province that desperately needs the help and this is apparent when driving along the dirt road to the village - the poverty is evident: the lack of obvious crops, the shacks and random tarps used for shelter.

As per usual, we were greeted when we stopped and exited the van by all the villagers, who always appear a mix of nervous and excited but who are always very welcoming.  We put our gear down on our assigned table and organized all our building supplies - gloves, hats on, sunscreen on, find the hammers and choose your favorite (all new hammers!) and then load up your pockets, apron, or in my case I have learned that the best tool is a climber's chalk bag, with nails and away we go!  Given that everyone on our team is new except me, we used the first house as a way of getting to know what works and what doesn't work - does the tin go over or under the sheet next to it?  what's the best angle for the ladder for each person? how hard is that hard wood really?  can you really put a nail straight into the hardwood without bending it?  do you get vertigo when you get to the top?  are the contractors going to help us out and, since yes they always do, how much do you allow them to do the harder work?  The first house is always the ice-breaker - everyone finds their rhythm, finds a way to work with the contractors without them going to fast to ensure no one gets their hands sliced open, and everyone gets to try each "position" on the wall.  Since we do have one builder with a broken wrist (luckily her left one so she can still, bravely, bang away with a hammer!) we had a designated floor person and the remaining 4 of us rotated through the various positions - top of the ladder for the top 2 rows of nails, lower ladder for the bottom 2 rows of nails, and then into the house to help with floors with Thora and the Tabitha staff, Pon and Pip, if required for a break.

I am usually a top of the ladder wall person - I have no problems being up high, monkeying around on the joists to bang in nails, and generally am not too affected by the sun and heat.  That said, yesterday was not a good day for me, and I certainly wasn't at 100% today - 70% at best in the morning especially. I wound up spending my time half on the top of the ladder, and the other half inside the houses putting in floor nails.  It was a recognition that if I was stupid and stubborn and spent all day on a ladder, I was going to either (1) pass out (2) puke or (3) both and be sick tonight and tomorrow.  It was the smartest move.  Tomorrow is another day and more walls can be nailed!  Dermot, Susan and Rory were going awesome on the walls, with Rory taking the high nails and Dermot and Susan working the lower levels with Pon and the contractors on tin duty.  All was fine!    

R4T 2014 build team - Rory, Dermot, Thora, Susan, Me

We completed 3 houses prior to stopping for a lunch break, although in reality no one was truly hungry.  The heat and work beat the stuffing out of you and the last thing you really feel like doing is eating.  But you can't do manual labour on an empty stomach, so lunch it was.  It's always interesting to watchc peoples' choices of baguette fillings on a build day - all sense of culinary taste goes out the window!  Personally, I'm a big fan of a mixture of boar or pork pate (country pate) with cherry jam and Laughing Cow cheese, or the traditional peanut butter and jam and bananas.  It's an odd mix, but the combination sweet and salt and protein works great.  I watched Susan make a canned ham (like Spam), mayonnaise and banana sandwich and the boys eat mackerel in some weird red sauce.  Not something you would see on a menu in any sane restaurant, but there ya go!  It if tastes good and will replenish you for the afternoon it's all good no matter how disgusting it may look to those in the outside world. 

Rockin4Tabitha House #3

While having dessert (bananas and chips), I started to pick up random rock fragments near the table.  This area is so highly weathered that finding solid, unweathered rock is a bit surprising, so when I picked perfectly happy monzonite/diorite/monzogranite, it was a bit shocking.  I threw it to Dermot and a discussion on its composition ensued (something about putting 2 geologists together and getting 10 different answers for one rock?).  One of the villagers must have seen us looking at these chunks of rock and came over and handed me a shiny, silver-grey, very lightweight piece of "rock".  Before I held it, it looked from a few paces off like a piece of "specularite" hematite.  But no way in hell could that survive up here.  Even so, when he handed the hand-sized sample to me, I realized what it was - some sort of slag or sinter from processing!!  Apparently there is a Chinese company not far away who is doing some sort of ore processing and producing slag! I don't know what they might be mining to produce such a bi-product but we did see a few quarries and what looked like aggregate plants along the road.  He seemed very happy that we were excited to see the slag and we explained to Pon what it was, who translated as best as she could for the villager.  Nothing like doing a bit of specimen ID in the middle of a house build!

Rockin4Tabitha House Build Day 1

Building houses in Preah Vihear province

Cassava drying in the field

After lunch, we completed another 3 houses.  The houses after the first one always go faster as everyone finds their own rhythm.  I think they were all happy that we stopped at a total of 6 houses today though - everyone looked hot, tired and in need of a shower and a cold Angkor beer.  But they did great, these no-longer-newbie builders - everyone came away unscathed without cuts or even banged-up thumbs!  

Pon and a family through the papaya tree

The ride back to the hotel required a stop at the Tela gas station, detouring around the family of 5 cows who were in the middle of the round-about obviously headed home for supper, for cold beer.  We decided that showers could wait and had happy hour on the steps in front of our rooms.  However the griminess got to be too much after a while and a serious amount of scrubbing was required in the shower.  I'm always amazed at how much dirt, grit and sweat comes off you after only a day of building houses!!  It's quite incredible and could make for a great soap commercial.  However, I do feel bad for the hotel who insists on giving us white towels...

Supper is in 1/2 an hour and I'm hoping that we will be able to convince the WiFi at the restaurant to cooperate so I can post this blog.  Stay tuned for news of Day 2 and 4 more houses!!