From the ashes......

Day 2 & 3 House Building

In Banteay Srey district a family's house burnt to the ground when their 5 year old grand daughter, Ho, was playing with a candle while her grandparents went for a wash.  There was nothing left of the thatched house.
That happened on Friday last week.  Fortunately we have been able to help the monks construct a new house for the family over the past 2 days.  Rem, our happy Monk, greeted us at Hima Boutique, where we are staying, and navigated our bus out to Krolong Village, a rural area 60km from Siem Reap.  At the time of our arrival the builders who have been employed by our team had the footings, the main house poles, the bearers and the trusses up.  After watching for a short while our men, Ash, Andrew and John, got straight to work chipping notches out of the remaining 3 poles to ready them to be put into place for the kitchen and entrance of the house.  The men soon realised how hot Cambodia really is to work in and soon broke out into a bathe of sweat.  From there we all helped create the remainder of the frame, nailed the floorboards into place, assisted with handing the iron up for the roof and began cladding the house in iron. Day 1 finished at that stage.

Day 2 began very humid but the advantage of that is cloud cover that lessens the heat.  We continued to assist the Monks where possible but unfortunately most of the jobs were fiddly and we couldn't help.  We cleaned the house yard in preparation for the handover ceremony.
With the house completed the Red Cross came and delivered some rice and essentials which added to the rice and gifts we provided.  The owners of the new house, Mr Ly and his wife, are labourers.  They have 4 children.  Two of the children live at home (one is a labourer and the other attends school) and 2 have moved to other areas.
Other family and people from the village have been watching the construction and have a been feeding the Monks.  The Monks have translated the instructions from Khmer to English and have been taking many photos.  They work very hard and keep going under the watchful eyes of the builders.  The children of the village have played around our feet and have entertained us with their cheeky smiles and naughty antics.  The women of the village would like to interact with us and like to hold us and smile and talk to us even though neither of us can understand each other.

For this family, we have provided them with a new house.  We also contributed extra money into purchasing essential house items; mattresses, cooking items, rice and other necessities so they can get back to normal.  We have also provided funding for Mr Ly and his wife to establish a small sustainable business of growing vegetables around their house.

Some body language is universal and although we all know the word for thank you is 'Akhun', the body language of Mr Ly suggested that Akhun just wasn't a big enough word to say thank you.  He was in tears as he individually thanked us on our departure and lowered himself, bowing to the Monks as low as he could possible bow.
A very humbled and thankful man.