Work Commences

Shortly, dear reader, you will find out why I have not been able to write blog-posts for quite a few days! Mostly due to travelling around Nepal during the Dasain festival, when work stops for all but the most dedicated (or important) workers... such as those in the tourism industry.

But the phrase about 'work stopping' means little unless you know what we've been up to! So here are some photos from our first week of actual work at the school. The skilled labour has been unwell of late, and of course home for Dasain, so we have been mostly working on simple tasks like whitewashing some of the walls which were either a) poorly done in the first place, b) gone less-than-white during the monsoon season or c) have not yet been painted.

Whitewashing is easy! Step 1: mix the paint

 

Step 2: Apply the paint to the required wall - using roller, paintbrush, brush-on-a-stick, sloshbucket or whatever means are available. No need to mask off the orange stripe - we'll just paint over it later!

 

Archie (henceforth known as Alfie, because Archie means something like 'turd' in Nepali) and I did most of the messy, less important exterior walls while Nicky prepared her much smoother wall which she will eventually be decorating with murals.

So we kept this up for about 4 days, 5 hours a day, until on Friday we were asked to help build a road outside the school (bordered by our freshly painted walls). Frankly this was a much more fun job and involved lots of heavy lifting and moving around of hardcore and using an adze (always fun). Shortly afterwards, a steamroller turned up and flattened it all for us.