House Building Day 1

So one of the main reasons that we went to Cambodia was to build houses with the Tabitha program. The families are required to save up money ($30) to purchase a house. Then when groups go over to Cambodia (like us) we build the houses that they've purchased. The families that purchase houses have no other stable housing, so anything is an improvement for them. By American standards the houses we built are really more like sheds on stilts. The houses are approximately a 10'x12' room that have wooden floor and tin sheeting for walls. We ending up building our houses in a village outside of Battambong. When we get there the frames of the houses have already been completed by a local contractor. All we were required to do was nail down the floors and add the tin siding. Some of the wood was harder than others, so we ended up bending lots of nails. When we weren't building the houses we were entertaining (or being entertained by) the little kids from the village. The little kids were adorable. Initially they were really shy and stayed back. I actually caught some of them steeling our empty water bottles, they would gather as many as they could carry in their hand and then run away as fast as they could. After a while they warmed up to us. They really enjoyed having their picture taken and then being able to see it on the back of the camera. Digital photography is an amazing thing! They really enjoyed talking to one of the guys who was with us that spoke Khmer (the language of Cambodia). He is a tall, white American, so I think it took them by surprise. At one point they were trying to teach a couple of the girls some Khmer words and ever time the girls would mispronounce them they would just laugh and say them again louder. They also took a stab at learning some basic English words (ie. numbers, 'what is your name?'). Amazingly they almost sounded perfect when they said the words. We taught the kids the hokie-pokie, although it was more of a show for them, because they just watched and laughed rather than join in. It was fun to be out among the people and very interesting to see how things are constructed. We ended up completing 7 houses on the first day of house building.