So far, I’ve been on three Habitat for Humanity Global Village trips. This post is about my first trip, and that was to India. This was in November 2017. I actually arrived in Mumbai a couple days early so I have additional stories to share at a later date.
Habitat arranged for us to meet at the Silver Inn Hotel in Mumbai:
From there we boarded a bus to the small city of Karjat. It was a 4 hour bus ride, but as the crow flies I think we were only around 37 miles (60km) from Mumbai.
In Karjat, we stayed at an old and sleepy hotel complex call Rivers Edge – I just looked it up online and it appears to have new owners, and to have undergone a remodel. It’s now called Rivergate Resort. It wasn’t a bad place, just very dated. Plus, we actually stayed in tents on the far end of the complex away from the actual hotel. There was another Habitat team as well, both at Silver Inn and Rivers Edge. They were from Canada, and they were staying two weeks building two houses not far from us. They were great to have around – Plus they were far more organized than our team. <G>
The build was scheduled to take 5 days, and each day involved a one hour drive each way to the site. From there, we had about a 10 minute walk from the road to the site. It was remote.
On the first day, the wife welcomed us to their site by giving us each a bindi.
Once we were properly welcomed, we settled in for information on the couple for whom we were building, and the construction of the house. I should say that I did not write down the names of the couple, and that is why I keep referring to them as “the husband” or “the wife.” Also, I did not write down the name of the super-small village / crossroads, but I know in the local dialect it means “to pinch.”
It was explained to us that the couple represented the upwardly mobile in India. They had two children, the oldest a son finishing up a degree in computer engineering. They owned a very small parcel of land on which stood their previous home – In order for Habitat to build the new home, the husband had to tear down the old house and cart it away. Not only that, but the husband also made nearly 30k bricks for his house. After monsoon each year, he would rent a brick mold and go to the hills nearby. Red mud would wash down from those hills during the heavy rains, and he would use the mold to cast his bricks. After that, he had to stack them and let them cure for three years before they could be used. So this man was all in on getting a new house!
Much of the build really just involved us moving the bricks from the stack to the site, where local contractors would actually set them. We were quite organized:
I’ve never built, nor even seen, a mud-brick house before so the process was interesting. Plus, building a house in such a different country as India. I loved it! The first moment of celebration was setting the door frame:
From that point, it was a lot of moving bricks and making mud. In the end, and this is something I wish I had known upfront, this house would not be completed by us. Mud-brick homes have to cure for a period of time once the walls are up, then a local team would come build the roof. So we got the walls up and I am pretty darn proud of that.
On the final day, in true Habitat fashion, we had a small celebration. The homeowners were presented many gifts to hopefully make the house a home, once it was completed. And we took pictures!
I’ve always loved India, though I had never been before this trip. So everything about this trip was an incredible experience for me. I am grateful beyond words that I was able to go. But also, I learned such a fundamental lesson: Even in a country as wildly different from the US as India, couples share the same hopes and dreams for their families and futures we we do. This couple wanted to provide a better life for their kids, and soon grandkids. And in order to do that home ownership was key.
I mentioned I’d been on two other Habitat trips. They were to Jordan and to Cambodia, and I’ll write about those trips at some point. I was also supposed to go to Vietnam in November 2020, but we all know how that year turned out. Hopefully Global Village will have trips running again sometime in 2022.
And through Habitat or not, I cannot wait to get back to India and explore more!
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Will's GenX Adventure 