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Volunteer in Laos – Experience, Care, Learn, Help…Enjoy!
- Link to FAIR TREK – CLAY SCHOOL PROJECT -
At the end of October 2011, Tiger Trail Fair Trek, along with World Volunteer, and Earthen Abode Project welcomed from Sweden, 11 young volunteers and their fearless leader. After a long, but beautiful hike through the limestone karst mountains, they arrived ready to work on a Saturday morning!
Getting to work right away, the student volunteers were introduced to the clay building expert (Ms. Non), who kindly accepted our invitation to help with our school project. The volunteers were put to work stomping in the mud pit and getting the muddy feel for what the consistency of the clay should feel like. Lots of water, lots of straw, and lots of stomping!
The second day in the village, construction of the FIRST WALL began! We learned how to connect the mud bricks to the cement columns. Make sure the wall is straight and don’t be stingy with the mud!
Volunteer building tasks were distributed on a daily basis. These included collecting and cutting straw, making bricks, filtering sand, filtering
lime, making mud for plastering, making paint, collecting sand… Everything was made from local, natural resources. This made it a very interesting process and everyone can say they learned something from this experience.
Despite it being rice harvesting season, the villagers gave up a couple of hours in the morning to help with the school before heading out to the rice fields. School was in session during the weekday, but during the weekends or their lunch break, the young children would run over to the other side of the school building and help out for as long as they could before school resumed again. How happy they will be when this school is completed!
Check out the pictures for Lao school building progress made on the school from October 29 – November 4!
