Sunday

Hi Everybody

Well...everybody, getting on line has been a chore!  However, today the Gods are smiling.

I hope everyone is doing well.

I am in Lovina, a village on the coast.  We are at the second hotel which is very nice.  Since I have finally been able to get on to this site, I will just tell you about my days activities and about Gitgit, which is where the build site is.  Gitgit is one of a sub district of a village, Singaraja District, in Bali Island.  The main industry for the area is coffee and the spice cloves.  It is growing all around our work sites.

Habitat for Humanity's greater goal is to empower families and communities.  The program is designed to give teams such as ourselves an opportunity to experience the activity of  building houses  as well as  social-cultural experience.  Habitat for Humanity Indonesia Bali Project started in 2008, when the first housing program was implimented.  Since its establishment, Bali Project has served a total of 227 families as of April 2011.  Bali Project  contines to develope avenues of constructing simple, decent, affordable  housing for the purpose  of  decreasing homelessness by using various methods of housing construction with sensitivity to the procedures of the local culture.  Our local affiliate members here:
Agnes - construction supervisor -
Kefi - construction supervisor
Clare - Program development Manager
are wonderful!

The money here is in Rupiah.  As a new government has been elected,  the Rupiah has slowly crawled up from an average of Rp 7,500 per us $1 at the end of 1999 to todays rate of around 8,400 per US $.  It is confusing because of all the 0;s they add.  For example, if you purchase something for 130,000 Rupiah,  it would be around $15 in US.

Yesterday we were taken on a tour to Ubud.  We went to the Monkey Forest, had "Crispy Duck" at a beautiful restaurant in the rice fields, went to a batik store and also to a silver store.  We planned to do some shopping at a market but because traffic was so bad, we cut it a little shorter 

Our day begins about 6 a.m.  We eat around 7 and leave for the site around 8.  The drive to the site is about 1 to 1 1/2 hrs. depending on the traffic.  The traffic is unbelievable!! Many more motor cycles than cars and the roads are really only one lane wide, although they try to drive like they are two or three lanes wide.  The road off of the main road, to the site,  is only a car wide in many spots and they can  only  go 5 to 10 mph.   We are building two houses  at this site.  One is one bedroom and one is two bedroom.  The house are both for widow ladies with family.  They family all help with the build, even  the little one including a baby who isn't even walking yet.  He helps separate the rocks for mortar.

I have found out I have skills that I didn't even know I have.  I have been busy digging and building a septic tank!  I have done a lot of digging digging and more digging.  The trench needed to be about  3 1/2 feet deep.  the hole was about 3 X 6 and was 4 feet deep.  The saving grace is that the ground is fairly soft.  I have also been laying blocks,  pounding out rebar and cutting rebar.  All  very physical but I have been having fun doing it:).  Our Habitat affiliate workers here say we are likely to finish both houses this week.  I guess this is unusual so I am happy about this.  It will be so nice to see the fruits of our labors. 

Tomorrow, Monday, we are priveleged to be able to participate in a celebration for "Clean Water Resource Project".  We will hike in to the water site and then hike out and go to a family's house where the women and some of us will help prepare food for the second part of the celebration.  This will mean that we will only be working a half day tomorrow.  However, the family will have been doing some work over the weekend so that will be fine.