Spending five days in Borneo on a school trip, aka Discovery Week, might not appear to be very taxing and can certainly not be classed as work but today, (Wednesday) has seen nine students, the project leader, yours truly and a colleague doing some hard labour in the form of mixing concrete for a volleyball court. Why? Well the purpose of my place's Discovery Week is that the week should be mainly one of community service and doing useful things for others while also discovering something about oneself into the bargain. So today while other members of our party were off painting and decorating a community hall, please don't have visions of quaint church halls, yoga lessons, knitting clubs and blue crockery, my gang were shoveling stuff. For those who like to know the technicalities of concrete production it involves six barrow loads of grey sand, eight barrow loads of grey stones, two 50kg bags of cement, lots of water and plenty of shovel action. Fortunately our gang of labourers were up for the task and put their various backs into it with great enthusiasm. While we shoveled and mixed a master craftsman smoothed and smeared the mixed concrete into shape over a pre-set metal mesh and inside a pre-made wooden court-marker. The more we made the more he smoothed and by the end of the day almost half of court area had been covered. So far so good.
Tomorrow more willing labourers will return to the site to finish the concreting and he on Friday it is the painting of the all important lines so that the current players of of volleyball and future ones too can argue over whether the ball was in or out. I wonder if anyone has a ball?
The funding for the raw materials has been covered from the money that the students have paid to come on the trip and some local residents have contributed additional labour to the project. Starting as we do on day three of Ramadhan most of our fellow labourers did their stuff without the advantage of food and drink, while our party devoured their fried rice and chicken for lunch along with several litres of water. In a country of contrasts the new volleyball court will be within an over-hit smash of a plush looking house, complete with perfectly concreted parking area and two oldish, but in their time luxurious Toyota 4x4s. Should we have tapped up these residents for a contribution to the project?