Day 3... bricks!!

The trials and tribulations of the day before had left us with much sleep to catch up on. Unfortunately, we caught up on it a little too successfully and our designated 4.45am wake up time was missed by all. In fact, Hughes and Batley, the model leaders, were awoken by Jai at 5.14am: one minute before departure time. Fortunately, we all rushed to the bus successfully and were away close enough to time.

The early start was due to a national Indian strike over the country’s rising cost of petrol. Being on the road between 6am and 6pm would result, according to Jai, in us being ‘stoned by the locals’. Not a good day to miss your alarm then. Hmmm. Anyway, we fortunately managed to get to the building site without losing anyone to the locals. We had a very relaxing morning, eating breakfast in Jai’s house and generally lounging around the lush grounds until the start of work at 9.00am. With the rain falling steadily we lugged and hauled window and door frames over to the first site; the veranda of the house built in 2000 by Radleians. We fulfilled our media obligations with a few ‘walk byes’ and some token cement mixing, much to the amusement of the locals. Leaving three boys to get on with things, the rest of the group headed to the second site.

The site of the totally new house was a beautiful riverside plot. After punting the doorframes down the Keralan backwaters in a very shaky canoe, we arrived and carted the gear to the local engineers. With no real language in common, communication was tough, but we got by. Other than lunch and watching Henry Church bellyflop into the local river, most of the day was spent in a chain gang, either bringing water from the river to mix the cement, or lining up from a gargantuan pile of bricks to the site and passing the blocks in ever more creative fashions from person to person. George Henderson managed the record of 35 bricks dropped in the day: a record he was less than happy to hold. Still, we managed to get enough material there for the builders to put on about 5 layers of bricks, so it was a job well done.

A sleepy ride home later and we were all left contemplating a successful, if rain drenched and extremely humid, first day. As the rain again starts to fall on Kayolaram, and with us all fully sated from the fantastic meal and liberal volumes of beer, we can only look forward to tomorrow…