Habitat Barskoon

Introduction 18th May 2007

Cast: Emma Bushell, Derek & Katherine Groves, Robert Hamilton, John Hooper, Paul Mortier, Matthew & Sarah Smith and Dale Thomas. And diverse others.

So, what's this all about? Several months ago a friend of ours, Sarah, asked if we wanted to go somewhere interesting and build a house. Thinking it sounded like fun we got some more information. There is a charitable organisation called Habitat for Humanity whose purpose is to eliminate poverty housing worldwide. They do this partly by fundraising for money to build houses, and groups of volunteers (who do the fund raising) to help build the houses. The houses are then sold at cost to families who currently live in very poor quality housing, with the cost of house being put back in to build yet more houses.

All this seemed like a very good aim, especially after the amount of irritation I felt after going to Morocco last year and seeing mud houses washed away by heavy rain. So after a few ups and downs a team of 9 was assembled and various fund-raising activities undertaken, including a combined 30th birthday and beard/hair shaving (just before a cold-snap, nice). So far the group's raised a fantastic amount of money (splendid, as Sarah says) and now we're heading off on Sunday for two weeks of house building in Kyrgyzstan. Habitat has previously built some houses in the capital Bishkek, but we're going off in to the mountains to a town called Barskoon on the south shore of Lake Issy-Kul, the worlds second largest alpine lake. It's fairly out of the way and Orange don't think the mobile network covers it. But we've got high hopes since Bitel think they do. If we're very lucky we'll be able to post a diary and pictures here as we go. Find out in a few days...

And here's me testing from my old laptop that's now working (for medium values of working). And here're two pictures...: and

Hope that's enough for now.

Tuesday 22nd May 0915

Woohoo, it works. A little bit of fiddling and we're on.

Went to a yurt last night. That's the Russian for it, and I've already forgotten the Kyrgyz, although I'm sure one of my friends will be able to remember it... Good fun. Everyone here's really nice, and the weather is very similar to home: raining. But with more thunder, so that's good.

Hopefully pictures will follow, but we're now off for some breakfast, then a 5 hour drive through the mountains to Barskoon.

Tuesday 22nd May 2120

So, after our excellent dinner last night with the nice folk from Habitat in Bishkek we set off with Akram our driver on our 5 hour drive through the mountains to Barskoon. It's really quite stunning scenery, especially once the lake appears and you have the green grass, deep blue lake, pale blue of mountains on the far side, snow capped peaks, all capped off by the blue sky.

Driving around the lake itself Erkin (guessing at the spelling) pointed out pools of water in the fields by the side of the road that have started appearing in the last few years and starting to turn fields in to marsh. It looks like this is partly from irrigation systems failing, but the level of lake Issyk-Kul is also rising, so maybe melting water from the mountains has raised the water table.

After a few stops we reach Barskoon and immediately head for a meal with the local coordinators. More very nice people. We also see the building we're going to be working on. It's part built already, with its roof on. We're going to be covering the walls with mud and plaster to start with, then working inside, more details to follow that.

Tonight we've just settled in to our rooms, with Bob, Dale, John and myself in one building, and Sarah, Matt, Katherine, Emma and Derek in another. Toilets are in a separate wooden shack covering (you've guess it) a hole in the ground. Overall though, it looks comfortable and should set us nicely for the first day of building tomorrow...

And we've now got some pictures from last night and today...

Wednesday 23rd May 1709

we were woken up at two in the morning by a confused rooster crowing for about a minute. MORT left the room, presumably to go to the toilet and about a minute thereafter we were all awoken by a cacophony of dogs barking. MORT returned some time later, only to depart immediately carrying a plastic bag. Cue another round of baying from our canine neighbours. This time he did not return, and filled with images of a bloody and savaged MORT requiring airlifting to the UK for rabies shots, I left to investigate wearing a thick coats, three pairs of trousers and steel toe-capped boots.

Having myself eaten unpeeled apples, lots of salad and brushed my teeth in the local tap water, it could be considered unfortunate that it was MORT who was the first of us to succumb to DNV and i discovered him on the porch cleaning up. The rooster continued to crow for the rest of the night and John almost took an axe to it, but felt it would have left us with some explaining to do.

We start work in the morning and there are two jobs to be done. Making bricks and fitting the ceiling. There are horizontal beams already affixed at ceiling height spaced a couple of feet apart and it is our job to nail foot wide planks across the underside of these beams to form a solid ceiling. Janybek, the project mgr shows us how it's done and it looks easy; I expect us to be finished by the end of the day, despite the schedule allowing us three days.

one of the things about experts is that they make difficult jobs look easy, and balanced on our A-frame scaffolding, with the planks at an inconvenient height, we have soon managed to hammer our thumbs and bend most of the nails in half. It is heavy work as you have to keep the planks supported whilst hammering in the first few nails. Then just as we think we've got it sussed, we discover a new way to mess it up.

The others are making progress with the brick making, which i don't understand but involves a pool of mud and a mould of sorts. They seem to have pioneered a novel technique which produces both good bricks and bad bricks more or less at random. At the end of the day, the locals top up the mud pool with water and about ten local children take off their shoes and socks and start jumping around in it! top stuff.

Poor old MORT is still under the weather and cannot join in, much to his frustration. Also embarrassing is that the locals are so hospitable and keep making him soup which he can't eat.

There are no showers and no baths as such; you get a kind of sauna, which hasa hot water dispenser, a cold water tank, a small tub and a ladel. Pretty straightforward then. We emerge for dinner feeling much refreshed.

Thursday 24th May

Ah, that's better. Almost. Actually managed to help today, measuring and carrying some rough bits of wood that are being used to make the first layer of a ceiling. Then spent a pleasent afternoon buying some Kyrgyz felt products and then lazing by the side of lake Issyk-Kul. A good day, hopefully setting up well for finishing the ceiling tomorrow...

And some pictures:

Friday 25th May

Well, a better day still. We've now got over three-quarters of the roof planking done, and the brick team have finished making their bricks. Now we need to finish off the roof (using the last few bits of wood, so this could take some time), then we're covering the walls in mud once the brick team have attached a wire mesh to the wall to give the mud something to bind to.

We've also planned our days R&R with myself and Bob planning to walk the 16 (or 18, or 20, depending on who you talk to) km to a waterfall in the mountains, and the rest getting the bus there. Sounds like a plan.

Sunday 27th May

Just a quick note to start with, no entry yesterday due to the vagaries of the local power supply and my laptop battery being dead. The ceiling/roof planking got finished and we started pouring mud over the top side of the planking from the loft space, or at least lifting and carrying mud. This is much more satisfying for me and we nearly get the whole roof done, with local helpers finishing it off in the evening, whilst we had an early night for today...

so we got up at 0530 (me, dale and MORT) and left at just gone 6, giving us about 3.5 hrs to do the distance before getting caught by the bus. directions are: follow the road into the mountains and if you see a red truck on a pedestal, you've gone too far. we are not the only ones up at this time on a sunday and exchange pleasantaries with a local on a horse as we head out of town, explaining that we are heading for the waterfall via the universal language of gesticulation.

it is nice weather for walking and we make steady progress as we can tell from the roadside markers planted every kilometre. there are a fair few trucks on the road heading to and from the gold mine. they beep at us and we wave back. we were told there are wolves, bears and snow leopards in the monntains. we didn't spot any though we did see two birds of prey. an army truck pulls up beside us and we expect to be asked for our papers (which only dale had the foresight to bring with him) but he was just offering us a lift. as we head deeper into the valley, the slopes get steeper and presently we spot a mini-waterfall high up on the mountain, and sure enough round the corner we spot the red truck.
It's only 9 o'clock so we explore for a bit, get growled at by a fierce dog and wait for the others.

The minibus takes us on to a different water fall and we all head up into the hills to get up close and personal. it is a stiff climb but worth it and we take some shots of the team with the white foaming water crashing down behind us. I, dale and MORT together with janybek head on up to the top. this is a seriously punnishing climb but worth it as we get more good shots of the falls and the views are spectacular.

we hurry on down so as not to miss lunch and find the locals have laid out a lavish picnic for us. The hospitality of the kyrgyz is amazing. Then the heavans open and it turns into an english style picnic where you drive to somewhere beautiful and then stay in the car because it's raining. except they've already prepared hot food so we huddle round the cooking pot in our rain macs drinking soup and trying to keep warm. matt is holding onto the axe and jabbering BAL-TA which is the kyrgyz word for it.

after the soup we give the picnic up as a bad job and head back into barskoon where it is hot and sunny. a local family have a baby who is 14 months old. this means it is time for traditional krygyz celebration of tying the child's feet together while everyone else has a race. the winner of the race cuts the bonds, thereby bestowing upon the child fleetness of foot for his/her life ahead.

dale won the race obviously. i fell over at the start and took at least two others out with me. Various games followed most of which involves running around and sandles flying off at inconvenient moments. we kept winning the tug-of-war mainly thanks to john and dale until the kyrgyz put everyone they had at their end. we taught them 'stuck in the mud' which went down well.

we had a very nice dinner and were then treated to some traditional kyrgyz folk songs sung impromtu acapella by the family, all of which were both melodic and beautiful. then then asked us if we would sing some traditional english songs which proved both stuttering and painful. embarrassingly, we found there were very few songs which all of us knew which weren't pop songs and after weak attempts at 'when the saints go marching in' and 'scarborough fair', the only effort that could be counted a success was 'london's bburning' which we did as a round very impressively definitely.

So feeling stuffed and knackered we eventually made our way back home. Unquestionably a day of R'n'R if, as John pointed out, R'n'R stands for ravaged and ruined. If there are two phrases you need in Kyrgyzstan they are 'Toy Dom' which means 'I'm full', and 'Cha cha dom' which means 'I'm tired'.

Oh, one last quick note, my mobile doesn't work here because Orange are useless cretins who think that because their system says roaming is turned on it is, even when I've told them it's not working. O2 were good, I should have stayed with them. I've got a Bitel (who seem ok, even if their data network is a little flaky, with good reason) sim card and the number is +996503897241 should anyone need to contact me (where me is Paul).

Monday 28th May

So today was our second day of R&R, first heading off to Karakol town. We dither a bit at the start deciding whether to go to the museum first, but deciding to postpone it on the grounds that we needed the toilet and the museum toilet apparently wasn't very good. So we went along to the market first and used the public toilets there (2 Som each, about 1.5p) and they were nasty. Still, lesson learnt.

This market is quite small, mostly selling various jewellery, and we soon head off to a larger department store style market, reminding us of Swindon market from the 80s. Lots of stores selling slightly random collections of things with a slight aire of suprise if you take an interest in anything. We buy some knick knacks and eventually head off for lunch.

Lunch turns out to be a chineseish restaurant who also do a choice of chicken or meat pizza, except the pizza is off. I have a brizel that turns out to be (probably) a slice of meat wrapped around some greenery, dipped in egg and fried. Really quite nice.

After lunch we head back to the Karakol museum via the Russian Orthodox church. The church is a slightly boxy with intricate carving wooden structure (which sounds similar to my description of some arabic architecture in Morocco), with a new interior built in 1994 after Kyrgyzstan gained its independence. Lots of icons and a very good smell.

The museum that follows has some nice examples of metal work from 5C BC, a Singer sewing machine and some fantastic propaganda tags in English about how the unification with Russia brought peace to the warring tribes. The final room is full of stuffed animals including quite possibly the type of eagle we saw yesterday, whose name I now forget, sorry.

Next we head for a very brief look at the main market, and discover they have fresh fruit (including bananas), which causes some commotion as Barskoon has no fruit except locally grown apricots and blackcurrants when in season. They also have a few stores that sell chicks, chirping away, ready to be grown in to chickens.

Finally, before leaving Karakol, we stop at the post office so I can get some stamps. The building is full of faded granduer, and reduced to a small room at the back where the old lady isn't sure how much a stamp to the UK is (25 Som, about 35p, I hope if she got it right) and searches through a plastic bag kept in a wooden drawer for the 100 Som change I need. And the Royal Mail thinks it's got problems.

Now we head for Saru and some hot springs. This involves an hours very slow journey along something that can be generously called a track, through some stunningly beautiful land, eventually arriving at a sort of concrete yurt that contains a small swimming pool fed from the hot spring (around 40C). I can't help but feel that it would be much improved if the yurt was removed so you could sit in the pool and see the land, but the fact that it survives at all given the difficulty of getting there is fairly amazing.

A short bus ride back to Barskoon, some dinner (dumplings, to the delight of those who had dumplings for lunch...) and we're all set for a return to work tomorrow: preparing the outer walls and mud covering the inside walls. A good day.

Tuesday 29th May

So, after our relaxing and recreational 2 days off we return to work full of vigour (or at least not too injured). We split in to groups to variously mix mud for putting on the inside walls, put mud on the inside walls, and finish off nailing a wire grid on to the outer walls to give the outer coating something to bind to.

The inner walls require mud to be thrown at the wall, then smoothed and finally cross-hatched when slightly dried to give the final inside coat a good surface. Matt and Katherine both get quickly in to the swing of this and by morning tea break are well covered. Those nailing wire to the outside aren't entirely spared as some enthusiastic mud flinging near the windows helps everyone to embrace the mud.

Dale and Bob are doing sterling work stiring and mixing the mud and straw, but under the clear skies Bob is soon clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of sun cream, and shortly after applies a layer of mud, sun factor 5000. Tea break is briefly delayed by the discovery of a cat with new born kitten on the sofa. We discover that there's no Kyrgyz word for kitten (maybe using just cat-child), and later find that they don't really name pets either which is an attitude I can easily relate to.

Cracking on we get the inside walls finished and the wire all nailed up. We're now ahead of where we were expected to get and we're all feeling pretty happy about it. We decide to stack the bricks that have been made since there are more to be made tomorrow. The locals helping have started a stack already and we start adding to it.

Now, having played with wooden blocks as a child I like to think I know how to stack brick shaped objects in a reasonably stable pile, but one of the locals isn't at all happy about my choice of brick positioning and keeps moving them and trying to explain in Kyrgyz to me what I'm doing wrong, getting quite insistent about it and implying a certain lack of basic intelligence on my part. Zauresh (our Habitat co-ordinator here) comes over to translate but in the end just tells him to stop being so silly and to let us get on and stack bricks. Which we do, ending up with 4 nice piles of bricks (roughly 900). I think this shows nicely that people are in fact the same everywhere, with the same occasionally awkward people as I've met in the UK.

Still, I'm mostly amused by all this, especially Zauresh's reaction to it, and look forward to tomorrow: making more bricks and starting the floor.

Wednesday 30th May

Oof, long day, just sitting down with a beer. Possibly pushed a bit hard yesterday so we're all a bit tired. Still, got on with making bricks and cleaning up the logs that will be used as the supports. Started off collecting enough flat rocks that will be used as a foundation for some short wooden pillars, which will then have long poles laid across with boards attached above to make a suspended floor. Then I get my first attempt at brick making, which mostly involves mixing mud to the right consistency with hoes. This is both fairly hard work, and amusing when boots get firmly attached to the mud, requiring some digging to escape. Matt has a cold so has currently stopped singing Delilah.

After lunch we swap round tasks and I'm on log scraping. The logs to be used for the floor joists need their bark taken off to make sure there aren't any bugs. This is probably harder than brick making, using sharpened shovels to slide along the trunk, then using axes to sort out any knots. But it does involve using an axe and I spend a satisfying afternoon grinding my axe, then attacking knots.

The brick makers get shown yet another way to make bricks (every local seems to have their own right way to make bricks) which they cheerfully ignore and soon have another few hundred bricks laid out drying. Tomorrow is probably going to more of the same, but since it's our last day we'll be finishing a bit early and heading for the lake before farewell dinners, which is nice as it means I'll be able to swim in the lake before we go.

Thursday 31st May

TaDa! Done. We've got half the floor joists cut to size (fun with 2-man saws) and made more bricks than you can shake a stick at. On the downside, our bus driver has had a death in the family and is having a pretty bad week (after cutting his foot in Karakol). Missing a swim in the lake seems farily unimportant next to that.

My first thoughts on finishing are that it was obviously a useful job done and the family we're building for are very grateful. We could probably have gotten slightly more done with the addition of a decent bag of nails and a £10 jigsaw from Woolworths. But as a team we've built something that seems solid and meets the approval of the site manager (Janybek). All very satisfying and very good to see where and how the money we raised is being spent. A good two weeks, and Barskoon really has a lot to recommend it, I'll have to see if a proper holiday can be arranged here sometime.

Just a quick note for a couple of things:

• We've got hats. Went to the leaving dinner and got a hat as a present. Nice.
• The owner of the house where Bob, Dale, John and myself are staying brought up a bowl of something that turned out to be vaguely yoghurt like, and not wanting to be rude we all tried a bit so hopefully we'll be lucky and not catch anything. Unpasturised is good, right?