This year’s main project consisted of the rebuilding of a tiny two room kindergarten situated in Binh Luc, about a half hour drive South of Phu Ly. Another smaller project was being undertaken another 120km on down the road at Thanh Hoa and six of the team headed on to complete this job over the first week. The main job would see the single room facility be turned into a four room kindergarten with kitchen and toilets. As usual, electricity, ceilings and overhead fans round off the project. We’d dropped in to the job last year to look it over and the sight of 20 or so tiny children huddled together in a simple room with no electricity tugged at everyone’s heartstrings.
The kindergarten in 2012
Kindergarten 2012
We had the use of a covered area in the pagoda opposite the kindergarten to use as a base and a meals area. Once again, the local community undertook to provide lunches. We also shared the pagoda facilities with the children, who continued their classes while we renovated their kindy. Sadly, the children spend a lot of the day just sitting around on tiny chairs waiting for something to happen. They are incredibly patient but snap to attention when the teacher’s stick descends onto the desktop to signal the start of a learning activity. This usually seems to consist of chanting things. To brighten their day, two of our group led a rousing rendition of “Waltzing Matilda”. Despite the apparent boredom of the day, all the children seem very happy and are certainly very well behaved. Perhaps we have something to learn from them after all.
See Murray and Fran perform for the kids
Our meals area in the pagoda
Next to the building site is a wonderful old wooden pagoda dating back to around 1200AD. The roof is an incredibly complex construction made of huge solid beams of timber, the like of which would almost certainly not exist today. The priests (monks???) inside are happy for us to enter and inspect the building, even inviting us to sit down and share some form of brewed tea. This an activity to be avoided at all costs.
We broke into teams; the roofing team, the ceiling team, the carpentry team, painting team and electrical team. Of course, when there was heavy lifting or shifting to be done, everyone pitched in and did their bit. I started out as part of the roofing team, but after a day of incompetence, moved to the ceiling team, which proved even more disastrous. Our team of three became known as the three stooges, reflecting the number of total stuff-ups that we achieved. Eventually, we got our act together and by the end of the week, three classrooms were blessed with flat ceilings.
Roofing in action
Like last year, Christine took over the role of morning smoko organiser, roping in a couple of helpers so others could take over the task when we head off to Cambodia in Week 2. This is actually quite a demanding task, catering for 25 hungry workers. Most afternoons saw us headed to the markets or local shops, where Christine became quite a well known figure, causing much merriment with her searches for items no normally found in Phu Ly. It is safe to say that Vegemite is an unknown item in this part of the World but even things like cracker biscuits without sugar in them, or milk without vanilla flavouring can be a bit of a challenge at times. The locals in the village surrounding the job would cackle with laughter at the sight of Christine riding her push bike down the road through the rice paddies to buy bottled water to keep the workers happy. After morning smoko, Christine could leave things in Eleanor’s capable hands and become a member of the painting team.
There are so many hilarious moments during the day’s work. At one point, the ceiling team was at the height of frustration; nothing was going right and things were literally falling down around our ears. Suddenly, an expert in the art of hanging ceilings arrived in the form of a local People’s Committee Official who gave us all kinds of advice (at least we assume he did). Our collective tempers were at a low ebb by that point so the little guy was actually quite lucky to survive. It was only the humour of the whole thing that kept us from doing him in. Brendan, our Vice President, gave a daily briefing on the bus ride out and a daily summary on the way home. He is now famous for his iconic statement, “Keep safe! If it’s too dangerous, get someone else to do it.”
The relationship with the local workers is happy and cheerful on the surface, but gets strained when the tool or ladder you are using suddenly relocates to another part of the job. One time, we were cutting clean white sheets of coated gyprock for the ceiling when a local renderer appeared right in front of us and proceeded to splash large globs of grey render all over the place. As always, we retreated gracefully and spoke in hushed tones about his ancestors.
We’d get home each day tired, filthy and drained, but a shower, a session at the Bia Hoi consuming a few jugs of Phu Ly’s finest and a walk to a local eatery usually saw us revitalised and ready for more. It is hard to fully describe the experience of working on a PVI Project. The work is hard. The conditions can be trying and at times the cultural/language differences can be extremely frustrating. But the experience is a complete one, made special by the uniqueness of the experience itself and enhanced by the wonderful collegiate spirit of the group.
The new classroom on the front, another alongside.
On our final evening in Phu Ly, we took our lovely young friend Van out for a coffee. She talked of her aspirations to study finance at La Trobe University, which has a sister relationship with her University in Hanoi. For her, this is a huge ambition, having to overcome both the financial difficulties entailed and the reluctance of her parents to let her travel. However, she is a very determined young lady so I am confident that we will see her in Australia one day.
We left our friends after a week, with the job well progressed towards completion, to start a new adventure with more PVI friends in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We are sure the experience will prove just as rewarding.
Great to read of your adventure. You amaze me with the keep on going on (eveready) attitude and getting the best out of every situation you find yourselves in. Enjoy the rest of your trip and hope we will get to see the finished kindy. Stay safe and well.