We ended up providing roofs for 19 bamboo shelters in Archalbot, all tightly concentrated in a single community. But I’d still say Archalbot was a training ground for us. We really hit our stride in the neighboring village of Bharte, where we’ll end up having done about 80 houses. The community in Bharte really stepped up to the plate; we didn’t really have to do much running around encouraging people to build. Once we offered roofs in exchange for walls, we got walls and more walls. Today was our second tin delivery in Bharte – we were only able to bring about 30 more roofs, because we’re having trouble securing enough tin! So there will be one more lap as soon as we can get our hands on the rest.

So remember that road with the double-tractor-head-butting situation from the first time we did this? Ok, so, now they are taking down that pesky bridge where the wire had popped out of the ground. Therefore our tin delivery to Bharte was held up for a few days because the previously bad road was…well this photo is what it looked like the afternoon before we were supposed to go to Bharte.  You can see that the bridge cable that had been a problem at knee height a week ago was now at head height, and the road completely churned up by a back-hoe.  The reason is because they decided to take that entire footbridge down.  In any case, there was no getting pas this road block, tractor or no tractor, and the entirety of Bharte is on the other side of this 10 meter stretch of road.

Luckily, the cable was taken down and road cleared by late morning.

Bharte Village pioneered the group house, which is awesome not only because the group houses are very well made, but because it was their idea and they ran with it. It’s also a great solution to the land problem that so many families in Nepal are facing if their houses didn’t completely collapse. And when you build with bamboo, it’s not too hard to partition the inside if you want to.

The group houses also offer a brilliant opportunity to distribute…Life Boxes!! Since people are sharing these structures, they are the perfect place to put my little invention that provides some lockable privacy. In my personal opinion.  We ordered ten more Life Boxes and had them delivered with our tin.

The group house is Sirewari

One of our first stops was the amazing and now completed group house in Sirewari, where we gave out the first five Life Boxes. I started to put one in the ground with my twin sister Santa (many people, including my mother, have said she looks like me – and I’ve done a double take myself at some of her photos!). But we ran out of time and had to jump back in our jeep. So, here’s Sirewari…you can see the tarp this replaced here.

We continued with the rest of our deliveries of tin and boxes. Late in the afternoon, we arrived for a drop off and these two ladies got to talking with me. One of them had gotten tin from us that day, and the other handn’t. They’d been sharing a tarp with one other family and took me on to a ridge to show me the tarp from afar, in the hope the other two families under the tarp could be part of our last remaining delivery. There was something about them that was naturally appealing and almost familiar. I remember thinking their voices and speech patterns were a perfect representation of “how people talk around here,” because I was sure I’d heard it before.

Come to find out, these are Bal Kumari’s older sisters!   They were like, “You guys are the people who helped our little sister, with the roof and the cash.” And we thereby became besties immediately. And I love how they all seem to wear purple. I think I know these gals from a past life.

Since we couldn’t add to our tin list today, I did the obvious thing in the mean time: provided Bal Kumari’s other sister with a Life Box. We’ll get her tin on the next round.

Here’s another group house at the junction in Lakure. We have them Life Boxes too. Our local coordinator Laxmi was excited that this is a junction area that gets some traffic, so our Box will get some visibility. That’s right, you heard it here first, folks. Life Box. Soon to become famous at this junction in Lakure.

Laxmi has been an amazing liason and I think Bharte is a place where we will definitely consider starting our dental program in the future. The people here have been good natured and proactive. For me it’s been a pleasure to have these small personal stories woven in, moments of connection with Santa and Bal Kumari and the ladies at the tea shop in Lakure. It was late at night again by the time Dilmaya and I got back to the hotel in Bote Orar, ate something, and fell right to sleep.

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