Building houses

Namaste!

Everywhere in Besisahar there seems to be building work taking place.  It is becoming quite a boom town.  Opposite my flat there is another storey being added to the house, and behind the flat they have started a brand new school, by excavating the terraces to create some flat land.  Next door to the office too, the house is being added to, upwards!  As this is so different from how things are built in the West, I decided to write about it.

In many cases, to start with, the family may only have enough money and resources to build the ground floor of a house, but plan to build more in the future.  So a single storey is constructed, with a flat roof and with steel reinforcing rods cemented in place ready for the first floor.  When the family/individual can afford it, the next floor is built, but again steel reinforcing rods are in place ready for the second floor, and so on!  As Nepali families generally live together this arrangement caters for an expanding need as the generations grow up, marry and need somewhere to live. 

The construction method here is quite different too.  Bamboo is normally used for scaffolding, lots of it.  The building materials are delivered by truck to the nearest road, and then dumped on the roadside until they are moved by hand.  

Even the truck loads of bricks are usually unloaded by hand – bricks thrown from the truck to the hands of a waiting worker on the ground, deposited in a pile and then loaded into baskets to be carried to the site.  Often it is women who do the carrying, their baskets are so heavy I struggled to lift one when I tried!

Woman with a basket full of sand.

The concrete machine working on the
house opposite

Concrete is made in a large machine, that is fed by the spadeful or by a simple bucket with two pole handles, so it can be lifted by two people.  The machine has a mechanical pulley system, which hauls the cement/ concrete up to the upper storey – very noisy too!  This house having another storey added is directly over the road from my flat!

Concrete beams are made in situ, with wooden shuttering used to form them.  Iron reinforcing bars are shaped from long rods, individually by hammer and wrench, and placed into the shuttering before the concrete is poured. Concrete beams and supports are constructed first and then the brick walls are filled in between.  The brickwork is single skin, and often with minimal cement to bind it.  (Houses built in this way are surprisingly strong, as was evident after the earthquake, when they were still standing.)

Constructing the new storey on the house across the road

Plaster is normally used to cover the brickwork, which can then be decorated with paint or an arrangement of tiles stuck to the surface.  Often decorative effects are formed in concrete at the front of the building, and then painted sometimes in gold paint for special effect. This house opposite is being covered in small tiles, which have been soaked first in the little stream by the side of the road. I noticed the boxes of them in the water as I walked past!

The house across the road almost finished
- notice the decorative tiling!

Health and safety regulations do not seem to have made an appearance here yet!  The men working on the rooftop opposite my flat are all wearing flip-flops or bare feet, and of course there is not a safety helmet to be seen!    
I am getting a birds eye view of the new school, being constructed on the terraces above, as it will completely over-look my flat.  All the materials to be used are being hauled up the steep hill by tractor.  Deliveries often take place at night when I suddenly hear a loud rumbling noise as a trailer full of bricks or stones has been tipped onto the site.

In the time that it has taken me to finish composing this blog page, the new school has taken shape.  Notice the reinforcement for the next storey to be added eventually.  Also the lack of a fence along the top of the retaining wall - I wonder if there will be one added? This week I witnessed what I think was a blessing ceremony, with bells being rung and good luck scarves tied to doorways, whilst the pupils and staff toured the building - at 7.30am!

Dressing up - Gurung style

Namaste

People belonging to the Gurung ethnic group are very prevalent in Lamjung and there are many Gurung villages and people that I have visited or worked in. 

The lead female teacher from one of our schools, Khambi, invited the two biddeshis (foreigners) to breakfast at her house in Besisahar one Saturday recently.  After eating we talked about the typical Gurung style of dress used for festivals, weddings and special parades.  The festival of Lossar is a particularly important time for these clothes, as it is the Gurung New Year celebration. 

Khambi and her daughter, Susmita, then fetched sets of clothes for us to try on. 

We needed help in putting the clothes on correctly, but were rather pleased with the overall effect, although we don’t have the beautiful long black hair that the Gurung ladies have, that sets the clothes off so well.

This is how we were dressed;

Firstly a jacket, a cholo, close fitting and tied at the front. Mine was in red velvet. Over the jacket a cape-like embroidered red velvet material, the ghalek, is tied diagonally across the body from one shoulder.  Over the other shoulder is hung a colourful folded scarf called a parchora.

The skirt, the gunio, a long loop of almost checked cotton material in blue/grey is pleated at the front to fit.  Then a bright blue strip if material, the patukha, is wound cummerbund-style around the waist, to secure the skirt.

We were even given traditional beads to wear – phote, strings of small bright green beads, and muga malla made of much larger orange or amber coloured beads.  The final touch was the bracelets, chura, although as biddeshis  our hands are too wide to force most of these on. 

Thank you Khambi and Susmita for a lovely morning.

Hydro-electricity

Namaste.

In Nepal the demand for electricity has far outstripped the supply, and so many areas are subjected to “load shedding” as the systematic power cuts are called.  As so much of the country is extremely hilly or mountainous, with fast flowing rivers draining through it, there is a huge untapped source of hydro-electricity that, with investment, could become available.

An access tunnel entrance at Ngadi

Further up the Marsyangdi valley from Besisahar, a large hydro-electric plant is being built by Chinese contractors, and possibly partly financed by the Chinese too. This site makes sense as the river here carries a lot of fast-flowing water, especially during the monsoon period, and can be harnessed to produce electricity.

It is a huge undertaking. Ever since I have lived here, massive transporter lorries have crawled up the valley, on the only narrow road, laden with massive components for this much needed scheme. The contractors even had to build a new bridge and a tunnel through a rock cliff, to extend the road to reach the construction site.

The improved road, photo taken out of the window of the bus!

Before, this upper part of the valley was a beautiful unspoilt start to the Annapurna Circuit trek.  Sadly unspoilt is not a word to describe it now, but there is a need to balance environmental concerns with people’s right to technological advances needing electricity.

Looking down on Ngadi and the construction from one of the schools

Two of the schools that I work with are close to this construction site, and I was visiting one of them last week.  After my work there was completed I was invited for lunch to a colleagues house in Ngadi, close to the ‘dam-side’ and I was able to look more closely at the installations.

The dam itself is huge, dividing the river into three separate flow channels.  The gates were raised at present, allowing the muddy monsoon water to surge through, but I could imagine the potential for generating electricity from this torrent.

From discussions with engineers working on the project, who I’ve spoken to whilst travelling on the buses, I understand that some river water will be diverted into a long tunnel which has been cut through the nearby hill.  This tunnel is at present the longest in Nepal. Turbines have been set into the tunnel to generate as much electricity as possible as the water passes. The water then flows back into the river lower down at Khudi.

The huge red-brick administrative building for the hydro-electric scheme, which is being built downriver at Bhulbule, looks completely out of place.  However any building of this size in this position, amongst the traditional villages, would be inappropriate, and the admin offices need to be near the dam, tunnel and turbines, so there is no alternative.

Once completed at the end of 2015, this scheme should help to supply electricity to local people, and hopefully generate income for Nepal too.

Mushrooms.

 Namaste.

We stayed overnight at the home of one of the headteachers, after visiting his school.  His house is high up on the hill overlooking Besisahar. The following morning he showed us a small enterprise, run from his home.  Mushrooms!

A small dark room attached to the house has been transformed into a mushroom farm.  Row upon row of bowl-shaped mounds lined the floor, and from many of them a forest of fungi were sprouting.

The medium on which these fungi grow is made from rice straw, crushed into a metal bowl to make a solid mass.  Presumably the spores from the mature mushrooms spread onto the new host mounds, to later produce more fruiting bodies there.

His daughter was busy that morning picking the mature fungi, which would either be sold while fresh to neighbours or dried in the sun and sold later.

We ate mushrooms picked that morning, with the daal bhat. Mito chhaa! (Tasty)

Pheri bhetaulha!