Building Houses!

March 8th was International Women's Day, and to celebrate, I decided to join Habitat for Humanity's Women Build project. We got to assist the construction team in laying the foundations for two new homes in Savar, just outside of Dhaka. We spent the day breaking bricks to make gravel (which you can't find here in Bangladesh), carrying sand and bricks to the building site, mixing cement, and even laying bricks for the walls. It was intensely difficult work but a whole lot of fun, and a chance to meet a wonderful group of women. I'm certainly eager to find more opportunities to volunteer!

The 'Women Build' team

Building a brick wall with one of Habitat's full-time volunteers

One of the master builders prepares the wall for the next layer of bricks. He has a string tied to a brick on either end so that the new layer stays in a straight line.

Carrying trays of sand on your head makes it a teeny bit easier...

Gravel is not something you can find in Bangladesh, so people break up bricks to use instead. Brick breakers earn 1 taka (about $0.01) per brick and typically break a few hundred each day. The man in the center is one of the new homeowners; he was not too impressed with our brick-breaking skills and is showing us how it's done.

Break time!

Relatives of the homeowners invited us in to take a break and escape the sun. Children coming home from school in the afternoon were very eager to help us carry sand and bricks.

This cow is unimpressed with our efforts

Rana Plaza memorial in Savar

On the drive back, we stopped at the memorial for the workers who died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse last year. It was sobering to compare my expectations of workplace safety during a one-day volunteer project with the reality that so many people face here every day. I found it perfectly reasonable that we weren't allowed to carry bricks around without closed -toed shoes or the safety gloves Habitat provided for us, and were constantly reminded not to do anything we found too strenuous, while these garment workers were threatened with losing their jobs if they didn't return to work even after inspectors found cracks in the foundation, and despite the fact that it was not designed to hold heavy machinery. The building collapse killed over a thousand people and briefly shone a spotlight on workplace safety issues drastic enough to catch the interest of the international community - but I realized today that it's also the little things that I take for granted, the scarcely noticeable things, like being provided with work gloves and an ample supply of clean water in order to do a day's work. These are standard expectations for me, but not for most. And it's these little things, next to the tragedy of Rana Plaza, that make me see just how fortunate I've been to always be able to take my safety in the workplace as a given.