Because a few people in our group work in the medical field, we were offered a tour of one of the local hospitals. We toured the Emergency Department, Labor and Delivery, the Operating Room and standard care wards. One of the physicians who talked to us was a woman who has worked at the hospital for 34 years. It was interesting to compare and contrast the care provided. Great care was shown, especially to hospitalized children. Rooms were brightly decorated and there were places for parents so that they could be present to ease their children’s fears.

Back at the work sites, the building continued. At the first house, some of us were finishing the support for the roof while others were applying a cement wall covering to both the inside and the outside of the house. After we placed the final roof supports, we started placing the metal roofing. The roofing was an orange color to provide contrast with the red, blue and green roofs on nearby houses.

At the second house, we cut and placed insulation into the ceiling and prepared the floor for the pouring of its concrete finish. The son of the future owner of the house applied the outer cement surface to the house.

On our final day, we continued to place roofing, apply cement to the walls and pour the floor in the second house. We also sealed the window casings. As we neared the end of our build time, we could stand back and see how far we had come. From arriving to find a plot marked out with string to now seeing a nearly finished home, we could all sit back and feel a great sense of accomplishment in what we had done in a relatively short period of time.

Olna, the lady from the first house, prepared a thank you and farewell meal of dumplings, fruit, cheese, juice and tea and gave each of us a gift to say thank you. After saying our goodbyes, we went to the second house to bid our farewell to the family. The father also gave us a small gift to say thank you and told us that he had been talking to his wife every day and giving her updates on the house. She was in the southern part of Mongolia about 600 miles away and had yet to see her new house.

After saying our goodbyes, we headed back to our hotel to pack for our return to Ulaan Baatar. We had dinner that evening with the local Habitat people and said our final farewells. We left early the next morning in order to get to Ulaan Baatar by late morning to allow for some local sight seeing and final preparations for everyone’s departure. Following local sightseeing, we were treated to a show of Mongolian dance and singing. The folk music and dance was very festive and upbeat. Afterwards, we had dinner at one of the local restaurants and went back to our hostel for our final night as a group.

At the hostel we said our farewells as we prepared to part ways. Some people were planning to return home, others would continue on trips to the Gobi Desert, China and other locations. We came together as strangers and left as friends. If you have the opportunity for this type of trip, I would recommend it. It was a unique experience that should not be missed.

The third installment in Dan’s Mongolia adventure.

We have completed our first week of building in Darkhan, Mongolia. After a team breakfast, we started our second day building ceiling supports and rafters for the house. This entailed measuring, sawing and nailing – no experience necessary. Everyone on the team had the opportunity to try their hand at everything.

After we completed the rafters, we shifted to cutting 1’x4’ boards into 65 cm boards for what would become the inside ceiling. This required using several teams as we needed 360 boards for the house.

Near the end of the morning, we were informed that we would be building an additional house. After lunch, we went to the new site. There, the foundation had been poured, and waiting for us were large stacks of polystyrene-concrete composite blocks. The larger of the blocks weighed about 45 pounds each and were around 2 x 1 x 1.5 ft in size. People in the group went around picking up the blocks to test them for weight.

We mixed concrete, and the workers from Mongolia who were overseeing the build showed us how to correctly place the blocks. (I cannot comment enough on the patience of the build crew with us – they are great to work with!) The team divided into cement makers, block lifters and block placers, and the work began. With the guidance of the local builders, we laid the blocks, taking into account placement of the windows and the door. We used crosscut saws to cut blocks to size. We were able to place three rows of blocks before the end of the day.

The following day we went back to the second site to continue placing the block walls. We got to the site to find that the water in the container used to make the cement was frozen. We chipped out the ice and the day continued. We placed a fourth level of large blocks before switching to blocks about one-half the size of the original ones. Three levels of the half-size blocks were placed before capping the walls with a quarter-size block. The ends at the upper levels were started by one of the workers who looked like an acrobat as she moved easily around the walls. We finished our part of this wall by the end of the morning.

In the afternoon, we went back to our original site. Piles of blocks for the walls were waiting for us. However, unlike the polystyrene block at the other site, we were greeted by blocks of gypsum. While roughly the same size as the other blocks, they weighed about twice as much. We were told one reason for the difference was the material available at the time. The other difference was that there was only one size block – large.  At this house, the large blocks would be stacked up six high through a series of scaffolding and steps made from the blocks themselves. The work was much slower as we needed two people to move each block. By the end of the week, we had nearly completed the walls of the second house. Everyone wanted to stay Friday evening to finish out the walls, but our hosts said we were already ahead of schedule and that we should take time to enjoy ourselves.

The evening meals presented their own opportunities for adventure as we would go to restaurants without the aid of a guide. Most menus had no English subtitles and as no one spoke enough Mongolian to adequately translate, meals were generally selected through the use of pictures. There were times that the picture did not match the meal provided, but it was tasty nonetheless.

On Saturday, we took a three-hour van ride to one of the oldest and more revered monasteries in Mongolia. The last hour of this trip was over dirt roads which twisted and turned and dipped in all directions. We finally saw the Monastery, which was at the end of the valley on a large open plain. The Monastery is still in use today and houses about 50 monks of different ages, from young boys to older men. During religious holidays, the ranks swell to around 1000 monks as monks from all over the region converge on the monastery. We arrived during prayer, but were allowed to observe and walk around the temple.

There were signs of reconstruction going on at the Monastery, and piles of new brick to replace the old ones were all over. Visitors can walk all over the grounds and visit any of the shrines. Herds of goats, horses and cattle were all around grazing on the grass. They are evidently very used to having people around, as they do not run when people approach them but rather walk away casually if people get too close to them. We ended our day with an authentic Mongolian BBQ along a river near the Monastery. The white linen-covered table with folded napkins and wine glasses was a stark contrast to the fact that we were in a large grazing field for the local animals. The cattle came right up to us, curious as what we were up to, no doubt not used to visitors in their domain. A meal of mutton, potatoes, salad and soup was provided, with wine and juice to drink. It was a great meal in the quiet of the valley. When we finished, we packed up for our drive back to our hotel. We will have one more day to visits the sites before beginning our second week of work.