The final day of our volunteering effort to build a house in Nepal has come too quickly. When we started the house it was partially built, and we are leaving a week later with it not fully complete. It is not really a problem, as there will be more work to be completed on all the houses after we leave before they are habitable. It is just nice to feel like you have played a major part in building the house.
The Dhulikhel Mountain Resort has been a fantastic place to stay. It has been a much better option than the poor groups that have stayed at hotels in Kathmandu and had to travel every day an hour each way to the build site, compared to our 10-minute bus ride. The breakfast each morning on the balcony in the fresh mountain air was a perfect start to each day. The breakfast provided by the hotel was similar each day; freshly cooked omelette porridge, fruit, sometimes donors, sausages, muffins, bacon.
As our house is mostly complete, we took the opportunity to visit our host’s current house (if you could call it that). It was important to see their current living conditions to put it in perspective, but we were not expecting it to be to such an emotional moment. Their current living conditions were much worse than we expected, it was basically an old shed, which would have been freezing in winter and boiling in summer.
It was all one room – kitchen, living and sleeping area all shared. There was no ventilation (except to the gaps in the walls), so the wood fire stove was filling the room with smoke. The goat came in. Despite these conditions, they have been so friendly. these poor people offered us tea, a lovely sweet ginger tea. We had got to know this family very well working together all week.
We had time to go back to house 15 to finish some rendering and paint the door and window frames. After we put up a few decorations, there was a dedication and handover ceremony. Unfortunately, the planned soccer game with students did not eventuate as no ball could be found. A few of the guys decided that once they get back home they were going to send some balls to the school.
All the house groups congregated for a closing ceremony, where most of the groups put on a performance, singing, dancing or playing an instrument. It was our first time at such an event, and nobody had told us to prepare a show to out on. There were some surprisingly great singers, and the New Zealand team performed a Haka.
Our host family was very sad to see us go, we had definitely had an impact. They have probably never had so many people who cared about them. The mother Geeta was very sad for us to go, she said she was so sad that she could not eat. She has invited us all to come back and visit one day. And I’m sure she means it.
We returned too late for drinks at the Mountain View Hotel, so we washed up for last time and had dinner at our hotel. Dinner; vegetable cannelloni pasta, rice, fish with caper sauce. pineapple cake. I was able to stay up for a few more drinks, but not as long as I would have liked as the busy and tiring week had caught up with me.