Site01 | Prithvi
Prithvi is one of three school-build sites located in Nuwakot, it is one closest to base and volunteers working there live at base, travelling to work site every morning (which is roughly a 10min car ride). The site consists of two identical schools - each is a two-story building with 2 classrooms on each floor with an exterior corridor on one side, separated by a 30ft gap which can function as play area, as there isn't much space on such a tight plot of land. At the time of my arrival, one of the schools had the foundations and ground floor poured, while the second was just an excavated plot, ready for construction work to start.
I was only at this site for a week before I moved to mobile sites, but while I was there I was working primarily on the second school- setting out location of footings and columns in relation to the school that is already underway, clearing gravel deliveries and leveling gravel off at the bottom of the excavation, as well as being taught how to bend rebar by hand. This also served as an introduction to the work AHV is doing and how a construction site in Nepal operates. I was taught how to work with the tools at hand and how to problem solve on the go, how to complete the work manually when equipment fails (such as when the excavation got flooded after a night of heavy rain and we discovered that the water pump broke, so we formed a line and got the water out using buckets).
In the car, travelling from base to site.
Construction site: school on the left is getting ready for pour of the second floor while one on the right is an empty excavation, ready for work to start.
At the end of the week, several people were leaving the project and we had a little celebration with the community.
My work was primarily here: setting out posts and string for footing and column locations, as well as leveling off gravel at the bottom of the excavation.
Better look at the first school.
Gravel delivery (one of many): shoveling gravel inside the excavation.
Using string and measuring tape to set out column locations based on the columns already poured in the first building.
Photo: courtesy of All Hands Volunteers
Photo: courtesy of All Hands Volunteers