Roof construction placed!

After months of digging trenches, carrying sand and gravel and working on the foundation, making adobe bricks and building adobe walls: the roof beams are now placed! It has been such a great process! The feeling of seeing the classrooms "completed" is an extraordinary great feeling! 

There is still a lot to do! The roof plates have to be placed and the windows are yet no more then timber. They will be constructed and painted before we can place them into the building. Then the adobe walls will have to be smoothed twice and plastered with tapioca/clay mix as much as three to four times. And then, voila, classrooms ready to use!   

So, still a lot to do, but still great fun! And moments as the one seeing the roof coming up makes the less fun parts of it definitely worth it!  

Misty morning in Noh Bo

Naw Lay Lay has already been awake for a while,
preparing breakfast for the whole family.

The view from our bridge connecting our house and toilet.
A much better view for brushing my teeth then my own tired face in a mirror.

Pee Pee is feeding the chickens. She kind of talks their language too.
She is the calmest and nicest lady you can imagine!

The Norwegian Board on a visit.

I am in the lucky position of having a board in Norway that is both skilled board members and my close family. It was a pleasure to have them joining the Ga Yaw Ga Yaw team at the border for some days. One of them was unfortunately not able to come this time, but with the husbands of the rest also attending, it was a great group of 6 people to share our work and life with!  

The Ga Yaw Ga Yaw board and husbands.

To be better acquainted, the Norwegian board were working side by side with the Karen team on the building site. Big fun! It might also have contributed to give the visitors a genuine sense of how we work and cooperate on an everyday base. I am impressed and proud of the knowledge shown by the end of their stay!

Making adobe.

A well deserved brake after uncommon work in the heat.

There were also time to meet and talk without working. I think both parts were happy to get to know each other and learn about the other parts work for the same organization.

For me, a really touching moment!
The Norwegian team got a small insight in the Karen situation and my colleagues stories. 

Ga Yaw Ga Yaw!

It was also time for some sightseeing. We took them to see all of our projects and a little more!
Thanks to Koe Taw for great guiding and translation job!

In Myawaddy, the border town, looking over to Burma.

Maw Kwee.
The kids were singing and telling about their new school! 

2011

Inspiration!!!!!

Peggy and P Jo`s house at Pun Pun Farm

Interior from Peggy and P Jo`s house

 

P Jo - founder of Pun Pun Farm

  

One of the leading places for adobe building in Thailand is Pun Pun Farm in Mae Taeng north of Chiang Mai. www.punpunthailand.org. When I first arrived in Thailand, I was fortunate to meet up with people connected to this amazing place and went there to learn how to make adobe bricks and buildings. 

That is soon to be three years ago! Now, 16 colleagues and 6 adobe buildings later, it was a dream come true to bring some of Ga Yaw Ga Yaw team there! For us, travel is a big challenge. It requires some kind of papers, timing, and the right persons in the right mood, so we ended up a bit fewer the planned, but Ga Yaw Ga Yaw: step by step.... ! 

CLC - Chiang Mai Life Construction

Adobehouse at CLC

Marcus - head of clc!

CLC - Chiang Mai Life Construction  

www.chiangmailifeconstruction.com

is also an amazing place that use adobe as material. CLC is a construction company and has a bigger focus on architecture and business then Pun Pun Farm, but they also run workshops. Albert was lucky to join one of them earlier this year and made it possible for us to make them a visit too. 

The travelers:

Albert and Franc also got some "Thai-girls-take-picture" inspiration

Koe Taw and Phillipa reading adobe literature at Pun Pun Farm.

One of few picture where I stand still....

We are really grateful for the opportunity to see these places and meet the truly inspiring people who runs them. For us, these were days of new knowledge, adjusting of the old one and heaps of new ideas! We have already shown pictures and told stories to the rest of our team, and we are looking forward to further cooperation with Pun Pun Farm and CLC in the years to come!

Slab finished!

We are finally done with concrete work for a while! Indoor and outdoor slab, the retaining wall and trenches are done! The ground has finally dried up and we are ready to start adobe production!

Detail from the meeting between outdoor slab, trench and path

Ga Yaw Ga Yaw in action!
First day of adobe production on the MTC project

Adobe bricks.
After approximately a week in the sun they are ready to be used

Our bikes got stolen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We slept and did not notice before the next morning, but they literally locked us into our house, cut the gate open and took our two motorbikes!!! AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess that`s the price of living in a smugglers town where everyone is involved! Still frustrating! Really frustrating!!! It was our savings, and we had no such thing as insurance! Still, in a town like this, there`s no need in crying for help and justice! That was all too late the moment it happened! F***!!!!

It suddenly made much more sense why everyone have dogs though!

So, meet our new bodyguards....................:

Scary 1 and Scary 2