Day 9: Our First Stone Wall

Moon-set, 5am

Constructing our wall

Chris barely slept again so, when 5am rolled around, he went out to take some photos of the full moon figuring he was awake anyway so may as well. With the sky too hazy to bother with sunrise he came back to the room to try and catch some sleep before the noise of the day started outside.

This morning's breakfast gave us our first taste of millet bread. Millet is the same seed or grain used to make rakshi, the local wine. The round, dark brown bread was crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. We ate it with jam and an omelette and it was amazing.

After planning the terraced garden we decided we'd try our hand at stone work and create the walls for the terrace. The head stonemason Jengi turned up just after we began work and offered some advice in Nepali. Either that r he was telling us not to touch the good stones that he wanted to use for the restaurant.

Building a wall from stone is harder than it looks. Chris accurately described it as a giant puzzle except that there is an unlimited number of pieces and none of them fit quite right. One small piece at a time, the wall went up though as we wiggled and spun and jiggled each piece of stone into place. We stopped for a lunch of bhat (rice) with spiced vegetables and tomato and chilli pickle, no dal today, before getting right back to work.

Mato

The final layer of rock was to be stuck down with mud (mato) so we got to get our hands even dirtier. Deelay mixed up the perfect consistency using the clay of the ground and water piped from the stream. You can't get much more local or sustainable than that.

Shamser arrived home excited as always to see the progress that had been made while he was at school. We continued working as it started to spit with rain so we could get the foundations of the next terrace wall laid before we called it quits.

As we sat back in the evening and admired our handy work we were impressed with how our beautiful stone wall had turned out.

The fruits of today's labour

We helped Timmy with the bed he was making and swapped sunlight for solar light as the evening came. Shamser had gone to Besishar to collect another volunteer and, around 7pm, they finally arrived. They caught a lift up in the jeep which was conveniently delivering glass for the new house's new windows. Delifina was the new volunteer, from France. We all ate dal bhat together and at 8pm, exhausted, Chris and I went to bed.