Cement

On Tuesday one of our neighbours, Rudy, asked whether I was available on Wednesday afternoon to accompany him into the mountains South-East of Chiang Mai to deliver 500kg of cement and three guys.

Rudy and his team are involved in a successfully urban community health project in the nearby town of Hangdong, but are also involved in rural community projects in the remote mountains.

Video about their project in Hangdong

Wanting to see what he really gets up to, I accepted! So on Wednesday lunchtime, we set of, initially stopping off at various points locally to collect the three guys plus equipment (you can see one of the guys briefly on the above video - he wears a blue baseball cap and is helping clear stuff out of the house), before stopping off to load the 10 x 50kg bags of cement (remember those big really heavy bags!).

After a three hour drive through yet again beautiful country, up and over mountains (crossing the 1km altitude mark several times), we arrived at the village - see location on google maps

The villagers are from the Karen Hill tribe group living 15km from the nearest village, farming the land successfully for the last 200 years.

Rudy's team are only just starting their program in this village. One of their first tasks whenever they arrive is to address the basic sanitation issues, so have installed basic toilets, and are trying to address water supply issues - hence the cement to build a collecting dam.

Since their arrival in this community, the government installed electricity supply in the form of solar panels, car battery and inverter which is sufficient to power a light bulb and run a TV (to watch "Neighbours"?) for each house.

Having been 4 months since the last rains, the solar panels were caked with a layer of dirt. I was able to point out that if they clean the solar panels, they would get better changing performance - so I was useful on the trip afterall...

On a more interesting note, Rudy's team had helped them build a new pig pen using a basic bamboo structure. Simple, cheap, and effective. And it looks nice too. Problem was, all the pigs, except one new born piglet, were outside the pen instead of inside...

Anyway, Rudy and mine work done, we left them to it and set off.

More photographs here.

Tomorrow (Friday 26th) we are off to Mae Sai again, as our Visas are due for renewal on the 15th February and this will be our only free weekend for the next couple of weeks. Obviously we will take the opportunity to go up to the orphanage to see how the new pig pen is progressing, as well as deliver some cloths that some missionary friends have donated. Still no news on getting the paperwork to allow us to import the 200+kg of donated cloths currently sitting in the UK - we will ask Joseph again about his contacts.