Blind School -Nick and Nick's Project

New writer, everyone get excited! But not too excited this is not my forte. I want to tell you about the work that Nick M. and I have been doing at the blind school. Well, first I think you have heard that we are working on building a library for the students. The library will be full of braille books from which the kids will be able to read from. We started here, with a building that needs a roof, but don't think roofing is the type of work that we were needed to do. Our Bengali is non-existent, making it hard to communicate, and our large strong Mer'ican bodies are of better use elsewhere- cutting and screwing down metal roofing material was far too complex for the work we needed to do.We quickly took on the role of being the laborers, for the laborers if you know what I mean. Doing things like demolition, mixing cement by hand and moving materials from one place to the next. We became the human equivalent to a skid loader, dump truck, jackhammer, and cement mixer in the states. Nick and I joked often about how just one of these tools would blow minds over here.
One of our first projects was to move three truck loads of rubble into the library to raise the floor up about eight inches to protect it from the flooding monsoon season. The rubble consisted of broken bits of brick and plaster that must have came from the demolition of a building. Once the rubble was moved in, it needed to be crushed and made into gravel. Both of these things took over a week to do. This tray on Nick's head is the preferred tool to carry things for these people, I also used them in Africa...must be a third world thing. About five days of carrying rubble and sand with these trays we discovered a better method, it was to fill up these large bags that the sand and cement was delivered in and move those. This way was much more effective to say the least. We also found a real shovel about five days in and that sped up the moving progress a ton.
I think one of the biggest challenges for Nick and I was the constant struggle to stay hydrated. For us, we found drinking water just wasn't enough for our bodies to cool down and and run well in the intense heat and humidity we were working in. We started mixing glucose (sugar) and hydration salts in with our water. We named these concoctions "Super Drinks" because they aloud us to stay hydrated and work hard the whole day. As you can see from the pictures our bodies are drenched with sweat from head to toe.
Despite the language barrier we were able to build a relationship with the workers. They're great, happy people, whom we have a large amount of respect for. We had the opportunity to eat with them a couple times and each time it was a treat. The second time we did, Sabrotu took us to a restaurant that he eats at regularly. There was no menus so he ordered for us. What came out was a typical Indian dish. It had a large portion of rice in the center and three different Indian concoctions to mix with the rice on the sides. The first was Dhal which is like a lentil soup, second was a veggie medley in a sauce, and the last was a potato dish also in a sauce. All of them have a unique and delicious taste that we enjoyed with our hands in traditional Indian style. My good friend Matt Hay always talks about food in regards of whether it's from flavor country or not. Well Matt, you can't even imagine flavor country until you have been to India. I've eaten the most flavor-filled food of my life here, and some of the best stuff has been at little places like this one. The meal only cost each of us 20 Rps which is the American equivalent to about 50 cents and it was all you can eat!
There were two workers that work for the school on a regular basis there names are Mudu, and Sabrotu. Mudu spoke no English at all but we seamed to communicate efficiently with hand signals and doing things which he would either allow or stop depending on whether it was correct or not. He always was smiling though, and most of the time when we asked him something he replies with the classic Indian side head nod. To this day we haven't figured out what is meant by this common gesture. It is like a mix between what we thought the universal head gestures for yes and no, up and down for yes, and side to side for no. In this gesture though, they cock their head usually to the left side in the direction of ear to shoulder, and if done fast it looks like they have Tourette's says Sierra. Interestingly we've seen this gesture in every city we have been in, from a range of different people as well. Everyone from taxi drivers to the people in the hospital in Kolkata do it. I want to know what it means! Despite not knowing we have all adopted it in our regular communication with everyone.
Subrotu is our go to man, he is a strong and happy 5'3" man we look to for most of our instruction. He communicates with us through broken English that we love. Sometimes we have no idea what the another is trying to communicate and we just end up laughing and letting it go. Despite the communication barrier with both these men we've loved working with them and enjoy their company. As you can see there was a lot of brick work we helped out with as well. We were able to lay some block- as Nick and I like to say. After the block was laid, plastering is done, which is basically throwing cement on the freshly made wall. After the technical work begins. So, as you can guess, we didn't do much of it. The plaster is smoothed out with a strait edge and finished with wooden floats to make it smooth. I was able to do a section under the close supervision of Subrotu. Mudu on the left and Subrotu on the right.I like this one.The guysDoin' work!Finishing the floor.
These four or so photos were take last Friday when we were pouring the cement for the floor. This was the biggest work day of the project and it all started with a taxi driver that gave the run around so to speak on our way there. With our frustration we dove right in to work, working hard moving sand, rocks and cement, mixing it constantly until the floor was finished at about 9 PM. We were tied and ready to get some sleep when we were invited to eat with some of the faculty of the school. We excepted and had another great Indian meal. We plan to work on the library until we leave on Wednesday. It won't not be finished by then, but the large part of the project is behind us now. All that is left is paint and some other finishing work. Nick and I are very satisfied with the work that we've done and plan to see the project on our lay-over on our way to Thailand.
Thanks for reading, Nick.