A group from LYIT has travelled to India with Habitat for Humanity to build homes for those less well off than ourselves.
Those who arrived in India yesterday are lecturer Mary Dunnion, lecturer Dr Kevin O’Brien and students Tony Mc Gilloway, Shaun Gallagher, Elaine Coleman, Siobhan Carty, Niamh Fleming and Fiona Sammon. All the students travelling are part of the nursing degree programme at LYIT.
Tony McGilloway is sending regular letters from India on their work. Here’s his first dispatch.
Hi folks,
The team and I spent our first full day working on the Habitat building project, but before we started work the group leaders took us to a primary and secondary school, and what an eye opener.
So many smiling faces and the enthusiasm of the children to make the best of the opportunity they have been given was overwhelming. These were children from a small village called Perani, approximately 25 miles from the city of Pondicherry, I did not see any shoes but lots of massive welcoming smiles, Habitat have been working in this village for a number of years and the difference it has made to the quality of life seems amazing.
We called to a nearly completed house and met with the new owner, a woman of 38, who had brought up two children in a mud and straw hut approximately 12 x 12 feet. She told me her son was now training to be a teacher and he was 22 and her daughter was married, the pride the woman had in showing us the new property she was receiving was amazing. It was a simple three room house but it was constructed to survive an earthquake of 5.5 on the Richter scale, cyclones and floods all of which are common in this area.
We as a team are working on the construction of a similar house, it will accommodate a family of five, the husband and wife assisted us. We spent most of today moving and sieving sand in preparation for tomorrow when we hope to create a ring beam around the house to support the roof. We were all exhausted by the end of the day working in temperatures which touched 35 degrees and I expect that none of us will have any difficulty sleeping tonight.
Our second day was similar to the first but the temperatures broke forty degrees at times, we spent our whole day moving and sieving approximately five tonnes of sand again, thankfully this task is now completed. I was never as glad to get into the shower. Today was Niamh Flemming’s 22nd birthday so we may have a celebratory drink with her. Tomorrow we will be pouring a concrete roof we will have the house sealed by week’s end.
Tony
Pondicherry, India.
