Hands to Work, Hearts to God: Thailand Highlight #2: Building From the Ground Up

There's something about working with your hands and seeing a tangible result that is very satisfying. Working outside on our earthbag building reminded me of all those good times with Habitat for Humanity. The purpose of our build project was to provide training for the Free Burma Rangers in earthbag construction methods that are sustainable and use local materials. On top of that the building is resistant to bullets, fire, and earthquakes. The ultimate goal is to equip them to build their own medical facility in the jungle of Burma. The actual location of the hospital site in Burma is confidential (if the Burma Army found it they would likely try to destroy it), so it's a little strange to not know much of anything about the site we are designing for. But with our time in Thailand, we basically wanted to teach medics to be builders.

There was an excellent backdrop for our work site

A great work crew of FBR medics was ready for us when we arrived on the site. I think at first they expected us engineers and architects to basically supervise the project and tell them what to do. When we worked beside them from sunrise to sunset it seemed that they gained respect for our team. We originally planned on working for eight days, but we decided to stay at the village an extra two days so that we could finish enough to complete the training. When we finally got to see the finished product, all our hard work through the hot sun, downpours, bugs, and humidity was worth it. Although exhausting working about 12 hours each day, it was a great experience of teaching and learning at the same time.

The hard working team couldn't go very long without smiling and laughing

And while the earthbag structure was basically a practice building, it still had quite a significance for the team. Everyone worked so hard and the FBR team asked lots of questions because they wanted to learn to be able to do it themselves. One great moment was when everyone got together and lifted the roofs up onto the building. In the end we handed the work of finishing touches off to the medics and the building became theirs. After this project the FBR team became confident in their ability to build whatever we end up designing for them in Burma. And that was our goal, so praise God for that.