My Newfound Appreciation

I have a newfound appreciation for Irish potato farmers and anyoneelse who has to toil in rocky soil.
Life has been incredibly busy since returning to country. As a strangemethod for relaxation, I signed up to help out with a Habitat forHumanity build in a village near Bishkek. The logic was that, since Iused to do Habitat occasionally on the weekends in the states and dogenuinely find the manual labor a great stress relief, I would berelaxing in the comfort of doing something familiar with somevolunteer friends. Don’t get me wrong, I was not naïve enough to thinkthat houses here are constructed in the same manner as homes in thestates but I was a bit caught off-guard by home different the workwas.
The majority of the house had already previously been built and thefamily was living there. We were helping to finish the floor of thefinal room in the house. The walls had already been built and our taskwas to fill in the space with a foot of dirt and gravel (and chunks ofbroken cement) so that they could pour the concrete floor down. Weworked in teams of two or three shoveling, hoeing, and hauling“wheelbarrows” filled with the dirt and gravel concoction into thehouse where the owner tamped it down with what appeared to be animmobile wooden pogo stick. It was part of a trunk from a small treewith a piece of 2x4 nailed to the bottom and a stick nailed to the topend to create a handle. Our wheelbarrows resemble miniature hospitalstretchers made of wood and metal. The kind of thing you would see insome old war film. It was a simple but durably constructed piece ofrounded metal with wooden poles on either side for two people to beable to carry it. We quickly discovered that shoveling gravel is notan easy task despite the ease with which the locals demonstrated thetask. Never fear, the girls quickly improvised a life changing methodof hoeing the concrete and gravel bits onto the shovel. Hooray forteamwork and creative thinking. Granted, the pile of pure rocks andthe pile that was just rocks mixed with dirt that we dug from oursecond day proved to be significantly easier than the pile of brokenconcrete pieces we shoveled from the first day.
The locals were concerned that we were over exerting ourselves andtold us we had to take breaks every 20 minutes. Then, of course, wehad to break for chai time before lunch. In comparison to the taskmaster pace at which the American Habitat workers charge through theday, it was quite awesome to work a little and rest a little. I thinkthey were also a little caught off guard by females hauling gravel asour Habitat team consisted of 3 males and 6 females.
All in all it proved to be a most exhilarating and relaxing weekend.The family we worked with were some of the nicest people I have evermet.