Home renovation

Building on the hillsides - photo by Tamara Berger

Have any of you done any home renovation recently? We did a ton of this the last year before leaving for Bangladesh. His brother, Jay, helped Phil (actually Phil lent the grunt labor and Jay lent the expertise) to frame up our basement in preparation for renting out the main part of our house. Our brother-in-law Rod may have spent more time at our home than at his own helping with the finishing of the basement. And we did some renovation of our upstairs to make it into an apartment for our family while we rented out the main floor and the basement.

Well, Medair is helping do home renovation for the Rohingya refugees (but as you might imagine, this doesn’t look at all like the home renovation that you or I might do in the States). When the refugee homes were first built over a year ago for some, the upright bamboo poles were simply stuck into the ground. As you can imagine, that bamboo is now rotting, calling into question the integrity of the entire home. So the objective is to upgrade so these homes to be able to resist high winds during the upcoming monsoon and cyclone seasons.

We have shown you, in previous posts, photos of the construction of the Nutrition clinics that Christine manages. The homes of the refugees are built in a similar fashion out of bamboo, usually with tarpaulin roofs.

And a huge part of Phil’s job in logistics is to manage procurement. So he and his team (particularly his colleague Juwel) have been working at purchasing the materials that the Shelter team needs to help facilitate refugees upgrading their own homes.

Schematic for the new anchoring system for Rohingya homes

Here is a diagram of how these upright bamboos will now be anchored in the ground:

There is a “helix” which is essentially an augur that the refugee family (and the objective is to have the families rebuild their own homes with some assistance from Rohingya who have been trained in these building practices) will screw into the ground to a depth of a little over half a yard. This will serve as the anchor. Then a round cement block with a hole in the middle is sunk partially into the ground with the helix “stem” coming up through the middle of the block (which is solid other than the hole in the middle). The upright bamboo (each house will receive 8) - which will then constitute the corner or side main uprights of the home - is inserted over the stem which has an eyelet at the top. The bamboo rests on top of the block so that it is no longer in contact with the soil, prolonging its life span. And holes are drilled on each side of the bamboo so that a bolt can be inserted through the bamboo, go through the eyelet in the augur, essentially bolting together the entire unit. Then the families will construct their homes around this foundation with woven bamboo mats as walls and tarpaulin roofs held in place by both bamboo mats and lengths of bamboo running over the top of the tarps to hold it in place.

One of the blocks we broke apart

So yesterday Phil and a Shelter colleague, Hans, put in a few hours working on the procurement of the blocks that will be used as described above. The Shelter team was concerned that some of the blocks might not have been built to their specifications (proportions of sand, gravel and cement; whether the two iron bands have been put in the block, etc) that team had given to the vendor. When we contacted the vendor with our concerns, he said that we could come to where he is making the blocks, he would mix up the cement mixture in front of us, and make the blocks in front of us. So we did that yesterday and marked the blocks so that we can use them as a comparison with the blocks which have already been delivered to our warehouse. Then we went to the warehouse to break some of the blocks that they were concerned about to see whether the blocks had indeed been built to our specifications. Hans seemed to enjoy pounding on these blocks with a hammer to break them open! And we were pleased that as the blocks have cured, they seem to be as hard as we had expected.

Our hope is that these new improved foundations will give the Rohingya better safety during the upcoming storm season. 

Please pray/praise: 

• For the Rohingya as they face the monsoon/cyclone seasons again in what is essentially temporary housing. 
• That we can get all the procurement of these shelter items for the construction to happen in a timely manner. 
• For international staff that have various family issues making it difficult for them to continue in their roles. 
• For what seems to be an inordinate amount of still births in the camps and all that may surround that issue.