Ryan vs the Landslide
Thursday, May 25th, 2006
I spent last weekend in the tribal areas of Raigad helping to build new villages to replace the ones that were lost in landslides six months ago.
Last year, shortly before I arrived in India, there was a big flood which ended up being a major inconvenience in Mumbai, but ended up being a far bigger problem for those in the outlying areas. In Raigad, the flood brought about landslides, and those landslides wiped entire communities off the mountain. And the mountains were shaken up enough that when the monsoon season begins, the remaining buildings are likely to be destroyed. But since these are tribal villages, and the people don’t own the land they live on, the government wasn’t helping them.
They ended up living under makeshift teepees and bedsheets held up by sticks. Until the local church came in to help. The church bought the land, and set to work rebuilding the village, this time away from the mountain. I got involved because of the poster I made for the play they put on to raise money for the project.
The building process is where they were when I arrived. First, we mixed concrete and made bricks.
Once the bricks dried, we loaded them into the truck….
then we all climbed on top and cruised through the mountains to the villages.
And trailing behind…. ministers on motorcycles!
Our job for much of the trip was transporting bricks to the right place. Each house required 1300 bricks. We had pile up that many next to each foundation. Being with a group of mostly high school students, I was for the first time in my life considered ‘the strong guy’. Everyone marvelled at how I could carry 24 bricks while they carried 2. I also felt like ‘the old guy’. “Why, back when I was in Thailand, we had to tear out the foundations of buildings with rakes and broken hammers!”
Then the professionals would take the materials we delivered and make it look like a house. Apparently, the locals were bummed that due to government regulations, their new houses were being fitted with indoor bathrooms. It was not within their culture to have that sort of a thing, and it kind of freaked them out.
The final step was their fields. Not only did the flood destroy last year’s crops, it destroyed the seeds they would have used to plant this year’s. So they were holding a Seed Fair to make sure the farmers had everything they needed to get the village back on track.
An awesome weekend for sure.
