No Fishing!

We Now Have a Wall!

Well, I can hardly believe the progress in the past week! I was in Tejakula for another relaxing yoga retreat, and by the time I returned, the house had risen up above the wall, and the wall was almost complete.

2nd Story Going Up...

There are now two teams working on construction; one for the guest house and the other for the main. The foundations are now complete and today, they started working on the second floor.

The women are still bringing up material stacked on their heads as well as giant bamboo poles used to support the second floor while the concrete dries. Some of the pieces of bamboo are about 15 ft tall and larger than my thigh around. The site is now filled with sand, bamboo, rocks and window frames, with hardly any space left to walk about.

Almost every afternoon it rains for about an hour, makes the site muddy, but then the work continues. There are now about 15 men on the site at any one time. There is only a plywood shack, and they climb down a long rickety homemade ladder to the creek below for bathing and toileting. 

Henry came down to ‘supervise’ the building early and was fortunate to attend a very large cremation in the village of Peliatan. It was the cremation of a King of the region, who was also very wealthy. He died about 4 months ago, was buried initially, and was now having the ceremony to release his spirit so that he can be reborn.

There were thousands of enthusiastic villagers carrying the 75 ft cremation tower and three huge bulls to the temple, 1 mile away. It took most of the day..probably around 6 hours. Many people waited all day by the side of the road and there was a carnival like atmosphere.  Cotton candy, plastic toys for kids and food of all sorts were being hawked by vendors walking up and down the streets.

We now have a name for our Villa and will call it Villa Semua Suka....sounds exactly like it looks. It means 'everyone likes' ....and I hope it proves to be true! 

Yesterday, we went shopping for plumbing supplies. It was so exciting, looking at toilets, sinks and shower heads!

We are really glad to be here on-site at the building. There are minor changes and sometimes mistakes that are made, and we are able to intervene before it goes too far. A window in the guest bathroom was left out, and after the doorway between the bedroom and bath was installed, we realized that it needed to be enlarged in order to open up the room and make it feel larger. There was also a small fish pond built between the two verandahs in the main house, but that was a surprise…and we’re delighted with it. We also asked to have an extra window installed there so that we’d be able to look out and see the fish. But remember…no fishing allowed!