Melissa La Bouff Blogs About Delhi Belly and House Building
January 1st, 2010 | Published in India, Volunteer
The morning started out with promise of a full healthy group, but
sadly, two of our group members, Michelle and Claire, had to go to the
hospital for stomach problems. It isn’t truly a trip to India until
you have some form of Delhi Belly.
Upon our arrival at the work site, we divided up into much smaller
groups. After two days of laying bricks and cement, the walls of the
house next to the community center needed to dry before proceeding to
the next stage. It’s amazing how much of the walls were built in just
two days.
In the morning, Andrea, Jonathan, and I started to help work on the
roof of Prishanti’s family’s house with her brother Esteriam and
friend Babu. We mostly mixed cement and passed it to the masons on
working on the sides of the house; they were smoothing the surface of
exterior walls, it was pretty cool to see how much was accomplished in
just a morning. The view was gorgeous too, you could see all of the
surrounding fish farms and GP village.
Lunch was delicious as usual and afterwards instead of taking a nap, I
learned how to play cricket with James, Job’s son. The children in
this village truly bring new meaning to the word “genki.” In
Japanese, “genki” describes three things - energetic, enthusiastic,
and happy. The children always want to play with you, even while you
are passing cement bricks, it’s truly cute and endearing.
In the afternoon, Andrea and worked on a couple of sites, first
helping with laying cement and bricks for some stairs at Raju’s house.
The design of the houses is really neat, the stairs are outside the
houses, leading up to the roof. After our work there was finished, we
moved onto to help at Lassa’s house, where we mixed more cement and
passed it so the edges of the roof could be even. The work was slow
because it was high risk but again, always impressed with the progress
made.
Thankfully at the end of the day, we found out that Claire and
Michelle were doing much better thanks to modern and effective
medicine and our group is relatively healthy again.
