Site02 | Bachchala
In addition to the main school-build site at base, there are two remote sites located higher up in the mountainous regions in rural communities. My first remote site was Bachchala, which takes a 15min car ride and 45min of hiking to get to. A team of about 20-25 people goes to this site on Sunday morning and stays there for two weeks at a time, coming back to main base for a day every other weekend. The reason it is called a 'mobile site' is because our 'house' area is a massive white tent, which somewhat reminds me of a UN refugee tent, where majority of the team sleeps in bunk beds, while another 5-7 people sleep outside in individual tents. There is also a generous common area and a kitchen constructed out of bamboo and corrugated metal, capping the main tent at either side. Showers are constructed out of tarp on the back side of our site, and showers consist of a single bucket of water collected from the main water tank. That tank also provides water for washing dishes.
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Construction site itself is located a 5min walk from the sleeping area, also consisting of 2 separate buildings identical to those at Prithvi site, however here each school sits on a different level (ground steps, like in rice fields, and one school is located on a terrace below). In this case, construction has been started only on one school, while the second hasn't even been excavated yet. At the time that I was there, we were getting the formwork ready for the concrete pour of ground floor (beams and columns) and doing the pour itself (which took about a day and a half), as well as constructing the gabion wall (which I talk about in the "Challenges" section). For me, the most interesting part was the concrete pour, as concrete had to be mixed on site using a concrete mixer, then passed in buckets to the end of the line, where it was poured into formwork.
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First part of the journey to site, riding on the back of the truck.
Our common area, with the white sleeping tent in the background.
Installing formwork supports at regular intervals at sides and top of forms.
Getting ready for the concrete pour, formwork and scaffolding is nearly in place.
Walking to construction site from our "camp ground". The landscape in the early morning is astoundingly beautiful.
Site in the early morning, covered in dense fog. You can see the maze of fomwork supports installed to ensure that forms don't burst apart under the pressure of wet concrete. As I was told this was a problem during the previous pour, this time we had to secure the forms with extra supports.
Second part of the journey: hiking up to the remote site, while the truck takes our bags and food supplies to the top.
Local masons: on each school-build site All Hands hires around 6 local masons so they can help with the construction. They provide skilled local labor, teach volunteers how to do numerous tasks on site and learn themselves about safer building techniques in disaster prone areas of Nepal, knowledge they can apply to future construction projects. This also strengthens the local economy by supporting local labor.
Concrete pour day- we are standing in line, passing down buckets filled with concrete to be emptied into the forms.
First line passes full buckets down the line. There are two types of containers: plastic buckets and metal plates; one is used for columns and other for beams. Containers are differentiated because the mix for columns and beams is different, so this is an extra measure to ensure that correct mix goes into each form.
Second line passes empty buckets back to start of the line, this way we can have a continuous conveyor belt.
Photo by Phoebe James
Installing scaffolding so that we can pour concrete inside the columns.
Top wooden piece ensures that width of the concrete beam is consistent across the entire length.
Connection between the column and the beam.