Due to Karen New Year on the 12th and the 13th being a Sunday so no work was going to be done and a whole day of praying at church was in order due to the holiday, prep for the mud brick making demonstration needed to be done well in advance.
Waking up this morning I was finally warm during the night for the first time; it only took wearing ALL the clothes that I brought with me to finally be warm at night! I was wearing long pants and TWO longis, plus a shirt, a vest, a sweatshirt, a wool hat, the hood of the sweatshirt, and thick socks. It felt silly bringing all of this to Thailand where it is normally very warm, but I am glad that I did! At this point Andrew and I had completely given up on trying to help make breakfast and instead just watched it happen. After a brief stopover in the clinic we started to dig the large whole that would be used to mix the soil with either the bamboo or straw to make the mud brick mixture. Andrew was more than happy to be doing some actual work, so I left the digging to him as Mweh Paw and I started to chop bamboo and make the final molds for the bricks.
Making the large hole that will eventually be used to mix the bamboo and straw with the soil
I must say I am very impressed by Mweh Paw and her exuberance for the project. Not only has she turned out to be a great manager by helping to facilitate all of the meetings, but is also interested in being hands on with the project. She genuinely wants to learn how to make the mud bricks and I am thrilled! I also am feeling a bit less guilty because in July when I came with Wah Paw it was clearly she really did NOT want to be in the camp, but bringing Mweh Paw over Karen New Year allowed her to have an actual New Years celebration with her Karen friends, which otherwise would not have happened.
As we were cutting the bamboo, which was taking a lot longer than anticipated, Thala LiLi comes over and asks “wouldn’t it be easier to use straw?”
“Yes, but there is no straw, so I figured that it would be best to make it with local bamboo”
“We have straw in Sector 5 and 6”
“There is?”
Turning to Mweh Paw she exclaims “I didn’t know we had straw!”
And so the magical appearance of straw in the camp was made known. Straw would make MUCH better additives to the mud bricks than the bamboo, since it is easier to cut, much lighter, and the mixing can be down with the feet instead of the hands. So now a new plan has been made to go and collect straw from Sector 6 tomorrow for the mud bricks! And during the mud brick making tutorial examples with both bamboo and straw will be made to show how the same techniques are used regardless of the binding component.
The laborous process of bamboo chopping
At around 11am it was time for Andrew to head for the boat to take him back to Mae Sot. The Karen really never show many forms of endearment in public, but since Andrew and I are not Karen, a quick kiss goodbye was in order. Of course when I turn around two girls were there and now were giggling because they saw me give Andrew a quick kiss. Oh wait did I say that girls were giggling I meant 20 year old adults… sigh, different cultures.
The rest of the day was spent enjoying camp-time. I had definitely entered phase b. of camp-time and the ability to enjoying reading for hours on end my totally awesome fantasy novels. At this point in tie life was pretty good: enjoying the downtime, not sick of fish paste, and my mud brick test had come out looking pretty good. All was well