Day 5 - House Building

Bloggers: Eun Je Cho, Mao Yu, Lei Shuang

After an early breakfast at Sambor Village, we headed to our house-building site in Kampong Thom. The scenery seen from the bus ride was different from that in Phnom Penh; the vast plains and wetlands caused us to think about rural life in Cambodia. 

 As we got off the bus the villagers welcomed us with the Khmer greeting, “chum reep sur”. Their faces were full of excitement and appreciation for the Canadian International School student volunteers and as we walked through their line of greetings, we felt that we could lend a hand in providing them with better living conditions. 

 

We were assigned to different teams the day before and we were to build two houses each. Each group member, with hammer in their hands, climbed the stairs of the house, half anticipating and half worrying about the work to come.

The first nail was the most difficult yet the most accomplishing part of today’s activity. Although we had to restart the hammering process each and every time the nails got bent, everyone had patience and endured the process of securing the flooring of the house.

At the same time, other members and teachers helped out with the outer covering of the house. Everyone working on it had to wear gloves to prevent getting cut by the tin sheets.  

 With willing hearts and determined minds, we set out to build these houses. The families that looked at us from below gave us more motivation to work harder. Their hopeful stares as well as kind smiles warmed our hearts, and with that we looked towards perfection as we built the houses. We strived to make sure that the family living in the house would be comfortable, so should a nail be bent we wouldn’t just hammer it in, we would take it out and continue with another nail. 

By lunchtime, everyone felt a feeling of fulfillment although we were hungry; just nailing the boards and the structure of the house together satisfied us. However what warmed our hearts even more was the Khmer people offering us lunch even though lunch was already provided. As such, we tried true, original Khmer food. They were very generous with their servings, giving us more rice than we could finish. What we enjoyed the most was probably the chicken, which was very earthy and completely different from the processed chicken than we often have in the city.

At the end of the day, under the sweltering heat and the glaring sun, we were finally done. All 8 houses, all wonderfully built with our sweat, blisters and cuts as well as the compassion for the Khmer people was finally done. As bloggers we think we speak for everyone when we say we were happy when they were happy. Through Tabitha and our combined efforts not only did we gift them with 8 brand new houses but also new blankets as a housewarming gifts. To see the grateful smiles on their faces as we took our farewell pictures with them was in itself a great gift to ourselves.