Building Homes; Changing Lives

When fellow AYAD and cool chick, Mon, said she was organising a ‘Women Build’ for Habitat for Humanity to mark International Women’s Day, I thought ‘hell yah, count me in’. And she did.

I was all very excited, until the night before the big day, when I realised that actually I haven’t the faintest fucking idea how to build a house, and had sort of just imagined swanning about with a cute little toolbelt around my hips and a hammer in my hand posing for photos. Shit. I’m actually going to have to do some physical labour and get dirty! Shit.

Anyway, being a woman of multiple talents (including a steely determination to do anything a man can do) I met about 50 other women, Australian, American, and Brit alike, at the American Club, where we hopped in some minivans and made our way north to Savar to help build homes for three lucky families. Armed with shovels, buckets, hammers and loads of promotional materials (banners, t-shirts and cameras) we were quite a sight in Savar.

After a quick pep talk and some background on women’s empowerment and gender disparities in Bangladesh, we were motivated to build some houses (and kick male ass...or was that just me? Oh...) A group of us AYADs were assigned to a house which was already quite well built...well, in so far that it had walls and a roof... ‘Oh goody, it’s finished. Shall we take some photos - is there is cute little toolbelt and a hammer I can hold for a second - and then go for a cocktail? ...What? No? Oh, ok then’.

Alternating between brick chipping (which is quite a skill actually...how to get the chips at a size that isn’t too big, but not so small that the Bangladeshi women and children surrounding us aren’t complaining that we are making ‘flour’, is a fine art) and sand sifting. It was bloody hot and some of us were extremely hungover (not me Mum, promise). The locals found us incredibly entertaining and we assisted (albeit in a small way) to building a house for those most deserving.

And I did get dirty.

It was fucking excellent.

I even have photos to prove it.

Anyway, before we knew it the day was over and it was home for a shower and a well deserved massage (not that I’ve convinced either of my Matt’s to give me one yet...sneaks).

A great way to spend the day and support a worthy cause and a great NGO.