Photos of the pit latrine (the stone building with curves), the birth building, and the mud round house with thatch roof under construction.

By: Brian Osterlin

As a colleague of Adam Perry’s, I joined this project to help see it
to completion.

My first impressions of the building site were mixed with jetlag and
curiosity.  This project has more detail and quality expected than
from the surrounding village homes.

There is no time to sit and wait for this birthing centre.  Many half
built houses in the surrounding villages sit with weeds and vegetation
creeping through the doorways.  It is rare for a building project to
be thouroughly financed from the beginning: in this region, building
is more of an intention than an action.  Medi and many of the workers,
high skill or low skill have a high degree of professionalism and
productivity.  With four structures being worked on simultaneously it
looks like we’re at full capacity and progress is moving ahead of
modest expectations.

Adam has related much of his experience and the feedback of the
locals.  It seems that this project has challenged everyone to step up
their skills set, their communication and patience; it has challenged
them to see themselves as empowered professional individuals.

Choices are not as interesting as our reasons for those choices.  It’s
easy to assume someone is ignorant when they choose differently from
us.  It appears that local builders relate aesthetics to showing
things are properly done.  That is, there is no hiding process.  There
is no concealing of details.

Higher quality here means better hardware, bigger spaces, stronger
structure and thourough finishing.  So I was surprised that the owners
of the house where I am staying had no screens on their windows and
doors.  They had fine bricks and ceramics as finishing materials, yet
relied only on bed nets to keep safe from malaria carrying mosquitos
in the rainy season.  The youngest child and the nanny contracted
malaria last year: sickness usually discriminates against the poor,
but malaria does not.

It is so dusty in this environment, perhaps screens become hopelessly
dirty all too quickly.  I am ignorant as to the reasons why the home
lacks screens.  It’s ok for me to be ignorant, for that is not
konwing: different from the act of ignoring.  an ignorant person is
safe if they are looking to learn.  All parties in this project are
looking to learn.  We’ve also a lot of ignorance.

Choosing to ignore is such a different problem, more severe, and I do
not see that so much on this building project.  Window and vent
screens, removeable for cleaning, have been chosen for the birthing
centre.  It will interesting to learn how well they work.  It will be
interesting for all of us to learn, as we are curious, not ignoring
the health and building issues at hand.

In the past few weeks there has been an organization of the various elements of the project and these seem to be coming together well. For example, the locations of the grey water and septic systems have been determined, as well as the location of the water tower and storage.  Work has also begun on the circular work space for Shanti’s Women’s Group, the third structure underway.

The two buildings serving the maternity centre are also evolving, and such things as windows have been placed and form work has been established for arches and niche spaces. As the structures take root in the landscape, both builders and community members are responding to the idea of working with varied building mediums. The local response to the work has been very positive.

The heat of the dry season means our pace has slowed somewhat or at least mine! I’m constantly amazed by what is accomplished in this heat. Power shortages and water shut downs remain of serious issue to the ease with which building happens on site, and is also affecting the wider community. There has been a lot of discussion on site in terms of where to get energy and water. Accessing solar energy (or other types of energy) and storing water remain key to the success of the project. It certainly seems that as demands increase for power, because of consumer demand (i.e cell phone use, computer use, the need for electricity in the rural context) that smaller scale solar and hydro schemes are worth investigating. Local and municipal governments seem ill-equipped to provide these services to the rural areas and the services that are provided fall short of consumer demands. Local strategies have responded in their own way, and several strategies exist for saving water, or sharing in the resources available, and most have some sort of collection design for rainwater, although perhaps simplistic in design (don’t misunderstand simple is sometimes more effective).
It’s no wonder to me that forests here are cut for firewood and burning to make charcoal is pervasive when charcoal and wood still provide the main source of energy to cook with. In this context, it is difficult to ask people to stop cutting trees down and burning on such a wide scale, when alternatives for energy are few and far between, and country-wide infrastructure is lacking, or provides inadequate service most of the time. Opportunities, however, are there to be explored in terms of building, designing and implementing low-tech and efficient strategies for storing and using energy. Solar and hydro technology and/or energy efficient stoves or ovens, for example, may provide some of the solutions to improving the local air quality or curbing some of the consumption of wood for fuel. There is no doubt that those energy saving solutions which are low-tech and remain in the control of rural communities will enable substantial savings to people in terms of time and money, with potential to improve the air quality and protect local natural resources for future generations.  The difficult task is finding those ideas and designs which work best, but if such ideas are proven effective, people are more than happy to replicate and implement those designs which benefit them.