The longest day of the year sure feels like it when all you have is a hand saw to cut all of your plywood pieces.
In all seriousness, we are ecstatic to have finally poured the wall of the school tap stand.
We had a few Mistris (masons) able to work with us today, including our homestay dad, Lal Bahadur!
In the morning we adjusted the wall formwork, including cutting slots to accommodate the tap stand curb. After nailing the formwork pieces together, we checked to make sure we had enough rebar cover and exposed pipe.
We also had to make sure the tap stand wall was rectangular and not the trapezoid that manifested itself as we were nailing pieces together.
Using a ratio of 1:2:4 Cement:Sand:Aggregate, we mixed the concrete and slowly added it into the formwork. Our plywood was significantly too flimsy to withstand the strain and bulged out at the base. We added a comical number of wood beams outside for support.
The concrete will cure for the next three days.
We designed the drainage formwork and spent some time drawing out and measuring the necessary pieces of wood.
Then using our new best friend the handsaw, we slowly cut out each piece and nailed the drainage forms together.
Just kidding, we struggled heavily cutting straight lines and were lucky to have a Nepali worker (who was working for someone else that day) volunteer to do it for us. At the end of the day we played hackey sack with him and his supervisor, Tekraj. He held his saw the whole time.
It is exciting to see all the remaining loose ends come together!
After the walk down, we went to the NCDC office to hang out with Rajan and have a dance party (it was basically just Daniel dancing with three Nepali men; vids to come).
-Abbie
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