Gadling

If you recall, yesterday I touched on the mud making process and how we were left out of squishing our feet in the cool wetness of it all which probably would have felt great in Dushanbe’s heat, but with time we would have muddier days. Day four wasn’t going to be one of them. For a brave two volunteers there was the task of going up on the crowded roof to hand off buckets to the construction master, Hussein. The rest of the group would remain below creating a bucket line from the mud mixture to the house where the buckets would then be pulled up top by a rope with a hook. By this time I had really gotten used to this bucket line thing. At first the task seemed a little mundane to have come all the way to Central Asia just to hand off buckets; I mean we wanted to build a house! However at the end of each day you could see the effects of how nine extra bodies impacted the worksite. I could just imagine the build days without so many people around, after mixing mud each construction worker coming out of the circle, each carrying buckets one-by-one up the steps to the hook waiting to pulley them up. I shook off the thought. The process seemed far too slow, too long.

Although I wasn’t brave enough to hang out on the roof for long I went up to investigate just what was going on. A wood frame had been laid down before our arrival and over that wood frame was cardboard. The mud was to be dumped onto the cardboard and smoothed out by Hussein. I found the cardboard aspect interesting and looked around wondering if all homes were created equally and the same in Tajikistan. I pondered the way my own roof was made. Space was getting tight. There were six people on the roof and while I was confident in their housing blueprints combined with our work, I still felt shaky and decided to re-join the bucket line below.

Down on ground level we passed the time away swinging the heavy mud buckets to the sound of whatever songs popped into our heads. At the very front of the line Christina had decided to make the homeowner’s 16 year-old son count each bucket he filled with mud in English up to one hundred. In turn he made me count to one hundred in Tajik. I was an easy target. I was the one running around all day everyday asking for new Tajik words. My little knowledge of Farsi hadn’t come in as handy as I hoped it would, but numbers are still the same with some minor differences in pronunciation. I was exhausted afterwards. No matter which language you’re using to count to one hundred it’s pretty darn tiring to do! Right around the time I finished the work above had been completed and there was no more room to spread mud. The roof was far from complete though. If I’m correct they still need to set or hang some type of tin or aluminum material overhead so the mud doesn’t wash away with the weather. Like standing in the mud mixture we would be exempt from that process too.

On day three we found we were being moved to a new site for another family close by to the one we had been working with the first two days. This new home was being built from the ground up, but we were coming in with a significant portion of the framing done. The home would belong to a doctor, his wife and 16 year-old son along with the parents of either the doctor or the wife. It became a little unclear and confusing at times how much extended family resided in anyone household in Tajikistan. The part about Habitat Global Village builds I enjoy most is the interaction with the families on the worksite, but the doctor was often at the office, the wife seldom around and the son actually helped out quite a bit when school was out. That day we would be making and mixing mud. Sort of.

All of the women in our group got pretty excited when we heard we would be making mud and mixing mud. We were certain this was the part of the build were we would detox our achy limbs by accidentally getting mud on our arms and legs during the process, but to our surprise and slight disappointment we were not granted the rights to play in the mud. Instead we would fetch water in buckets once more to pour over the dirt and straw that would later get tossed in. Once the straw became part of the equation I don’t really think anyone was dying to jump in. I imagined developing a nasty looking rash from the foreign materials and what my customs form might look like on the way back into the U.S.

U.S. Customs Form: Have you spent any time on farms, pastures, agricultural lands or with any foreign livestock?

My Response: Of course not. I just rolled and tossed around in Grade-A Tajikistan hay.

So my volunteer vacation continued being more of a construction boot-camp than a spa excursion with detoxing-mud treatments. I was cool with that. My body was starting to adjust to the physical labor and I could barely feel pain anymore. Second to creating mud we had to shovel dirt into buckets and fill in the hole that would later become the front porch. Neither task was exactly easier than other in the blazing dry heat. Throughout the day we took many water breaks which gave us time to joke with our onsite volunteers/translators (Khushvakhtullo and Khurshed) and probe them for useful Tajik or Russian phrases. Beyond the language the entire group was eager to learn more about the families. And little by little we learned more and more. Aside from our small cultural lessons and unfaltering efforts day three on the worksite was slightly uneventful in regards to anything shocking. Once we filled the porch and the mud and straw had been mixed our day was done. Tomorrow all that mud would go up right onto the roof!