Day 6: Building a Door

Our Work Environment

This morning was the Malaysian volunteers' final time with us in Gaunshahar. We had a breakfast of milk tea, omelette, toast, chapatti and jam before exchanging details and saying our farewells. After their departure Shamser and Deelay got excited over demolition and knocked over the last of the old house. Then, while Shamser went to work, Chris and I were out in charge of building a door and door frame for the new restaurant. We were excited by the prospect and eagerly set to work.

Demolition

Rotten, third-hand wood along with bendy nails made the process difficult. Add to that the construction site not having been levelled, the wood being bowed and the saw being blunt and the going was tough.

We were instructed to use an old door that was from the old house we deconstructed a few days back. The door was 22 inches wide. That's a narrow door by any standards. To combat the problem we scavenged around for a similar looking bit of wood and tacked it on the side. Problem solved! Next was the door frame.

Sawing our frame

As we were using a recycled door we had been asked to use the old door frame also. This would have been fine except that the frame was in bits, the wood was rotten, the vertical pieces were different lengths and the horizontal pieces were missing. This meant a lot of chiselling needed to be done.

With an old chisel and a hammer we set to work making the grooves for the tongue and groove joints we were hoping would hold the unstable structure together. It probably would have worked except that the 'tongues' were rotten and mostly broke off as soon as inserted into the groove.

We took a lunch break and enjoyed a dal bhat, this time with pumpkin, before getting back to work. We soon realised that the Nepali way was to do things cheaply and without much thought and then spend the next moment trying to fix the problem they had created. So...to combat the rotten wood, we tried bracing the joints. The beams were not even strong enough to support this. We squeezed the door into the frame in an attempt to ensure it was square, or at least the Nepali version of square, while we fitted the hinges to the frame. I somehow managed to end up with my finger between the heavy wooden door and another piece of wood when Chris let go of the piece we were working on. My cuticle came out second best.

Shamser returned after a while and bought the carpenter with him. The carpenter had the same problems we had but was happy enough with the wobbly final product to take the door frame around to the new restaurant and prop it up in place. I guess we just have different standards if what constitutes 'good enough.'

Chiseller Extrordinaire

Some discussion with Timmy, who had been doing the wiring for the new house, helped us see the backwards way in which things are done in this village. Instead of hiring local labourers and inserted money into the local economy that way, Shamser uses volunteers to even do the work of skilled tradespeople such as carpenters. While they may not be considered 'skilled' by Australian standards, in that we did just as good a job as the carpenter probably would have, it's interesting that he chooses not to give back to the community in this manner. Instead, he takes volunteers donations and uses them to fix the occasional problem for those in the community who may have been able to fix the problem for themselves if only they had some work and it wasn't all taken by foreign volunteers.

We spent the afternoon watching the stonemasons work on the restaurant and the foundation wall for the parking area in the far corner of the yard. There is always a million things on the go at once here. A storm began to roll over the hills and the temperature plummeted as the wind picked up, the sun disappeared and the thunder rumbled its way closer.

Our work of art in its new home

Coun, a Dutch volunteer who had visited Gaunshahar previously and helped out for a month, returned from his trek to Anapurna Base Camp. To celebrate, the family slaughtered a goat. Shamser emerged from behind the house with blood literally on his hands and a big smile on his face that said 'I just killed something.'

While we sat and waited for dinner to be prepared the weather continued to turn. The sky turned dark blue, then brown, then darker yet again as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and lightning flashed in the sky. The snow capped peaks revealed themselves as the storm moved towards us and cleared an area behind it. Then, the rains came and we got a taste of what Gaunshahar is like during the monsoon of June and July. Local villagers came and went, buying small bags of goat from Shamser's family.

The goat was de-furred using boiling water and dragging a cup along the skin before the whole animal was chopped into small pieces using a giant sword-like knife. Not even the bowel was wasted. Instead, its contents were emptied out, the organ was cleaned and it was chopped up with everything else...skin and bone included. It was super fresh though and, thanks to the gas running out, was cooked traditionally over a fire.

I opted out of trying the freshly killed and cooked goat but Chris tried some, picking out the miscellaneous organ bits, and said it was nice enough. I got an omelette to go with my rice and was pretty happy once I heard the skin was in there. We had an especially early night after a tiring day of working in the sun.

Incoming storm