Gadling

Most of the first-timers in the group weren’t surprised when we’d heard we were headed to a third worksite, but some of the veteran builders found this shuffling interesting. On my first Global Village trip five years back in Cluj-Napoca, Romania we stayed at the same worksite for the entire trip and noticed very significant changes from the time we arrived to the day we left. Christina (the six time GV builder) found it strange, but good. If ever you want an idea of how the local people live bouncing from home to home will give you a better understanding quicker. In Tajikistan we could still see what was within our means to lend our helping hands on the first and second homes. Making concrete was not easy at all, but we knew if they’d had more of the wooden frame up we could have knocked the entire concrete portion out. With the second home there is far too much to mention where I’m positive we could have been of use. However, the story was they decided to move us because this family really needed our help. Their goal was to have the home completed by the end of this month.

According to the new homeowner, Anvar, the house had previously caught on fire back on May 3, 1998. The fire was caused by fighting and shooting that had broken out and they were presently staying nearby in a place where rent is $50 USD a month. That kind of money for rent is considered ridiculously expensive which was why the family is really looking to complete the building by month’s end. There are six family members in all: Anvar, his wife, son, daughter and two grandchildren. The daughter who was my age was divorced, which piqued my interest some because divorce is rare in countries like Tajikistan. I never found out much and I would have loved to have sat and chatted with the daughter for a while, but naturally language complications intersected.

Getting started on this new site was frustrating for most of us. The work space was smaller than the previous two and it didn’t seem well-organized or that they had thought out in which ways they desired our assistance. There were too many of us for the duties assigned at this new site which for the first day ended up being some mud smearing on the back side of the house. One or two lucky individuals had their chance to place their fingers in the cool wet mud and smooth it across the rather rough bricks! The others were part of a small bucket line. Many of us became distracted with all the neighborhood children coming by to stare, giggle and chatter. Though the homeowner or his son tried running them off on many occasions they always found their way back to the big bluish metal gate in front of the house to gawk and have their photos taken. We still had two days left and I hoped there would be more to do other than filling our camera’s memory cards with pictures of cute Tajik children.

On the flipside we discovered more about this last homeowner than the other two and with that I felt more connected.

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!

On the days leading up to my departure both friends and family raised their eyebrows and shook their heads as I casually talked about my coming vacation. Vacation in their eyes is not taken in unpronounceable places bordering Afghanistan like Tajikistan and most certainly does not involve any kind of strenuous labor. While many applauded my efforts, several just wished I’d picked a different destination. In my eyes aid is aid and it makes no difference in which part of the globe one decides to lend a helping hand. I thought about all these things as sweat trickled off my brow rolling its way down and around my chin.

For the first day the team had been broken up into three groups. There were those who shoveled dirt into buckets, those who carried dirt to the pit, and those who worked in the pit shoveling and smoothing the dirt. I was part of the bucket line. The temperature was easily 100 degrees. The Tajik construction masters and workers watched in slight disbelief as our team of nine foreigners; seven women and two men baked with our tools in the heat. We were hard workers and wanted to do great things for the homeowner on his worksite. All of our building would be done in Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan, but this particular community or village was called Konstitutsiya as I was told by one of our helpful translators Khushvakhtullo. The homeowner’s name was Rahmon which meant merciful or kind and the adorable child he often carried was his grandson Ishmael. The women were rarely ever around.

Everyone on the site was pleasant and though carrying buckets of dirt took a toll on my scrawny little arms this was the type of cultural exchange I’d been looking for. This was my second Global Village build with Habitat for Humanity International, but after five years it was long overdue. I’d learned from the first the importance of giving something or anything back to the communities in my far off excursions felt highly rewarding. Interacting in ways beyond that of the average tourist I became apart of larger cultural exchange. Along with each pass of my two buckets 3/4 filled with dirt to our Tajik construction supervisor, Saiali, I passed a smile and a little hope, I’m sure. In Tajikistan the average house cost $4,864 USD. The average income I was told was around $20-$30 USD a month. Part of me couldn’t imagine. As I lifted another bucket I tried to picture what living in the country year round must be like? It was difficult.

Our knowledge of the Tajik language increased far faster on site than it would have just walking Rudaki. Most of us tried using terms like rahmat (thank you) and iltimos (please) as we exchanged tools or buckets. I challenged things a bit by asking for words and phrases like superstar and piece of cake. Jokingly I told our new friends the work was easy or khelyi sabud, but it wasn’t all that easy as everyone continued working their butts off and by the end of the day our huge dirt mound was practically nothing. We’d successfully moved most of the dirt needed to fill the foundation of the room from the mound to the room. We titled the room the pit considering it was nothing more than an empty space prior to our being there. Our volunteers, Allie and Diego in the pit were by far some of the dirtiest and like vacuums, sucked up the most dirt. At the end of day one the entire team could feel their efforts in their bones and see them in bruises that had only began to develop.

It was a good day and we were told the next would be harder. This is just the beginning of my volunteer vacation in Tajikistan.