Womenpower

Today was by far the women's day here at the 20 Day School. Well the women volunteers today were so heroic in every way with the remaining ferrocement channels that by the end of the day the famous male volunteers of yesterday had in comparison become not only feeble but also quite infamous. The problem or rather what looked like the problem initially, was that today we had to lift 11 more ferrocement channels and out of the expected thirty or so male volunteers only half turned up, the rest were women again.  The village leaders started asking the women to go back and send men instead. After a bit of mumbling and grumbling some women came forward and said “why should we go back? What makes you think we cannot do whatever it is that you want to call the men for?”.

The leaders still wanted to wait for the 'male volunteers' so in the meantime we started work on putting the earth skirt or berm around the south side of the building. You might remember that we had put waterproof cement plaster up to the window sill level all around. Well, it was for this mound of earth to go around. It is one meter high and one meter wide at base. After piling earth against the waterproof wall the workers put a layer of turf (of green grass) on top.

Earth berm around the building, to benefit from the earth's cool in summer and warmth in the winter.

Finally when the women just refused to go back, we started the channels by 1 o'clock in the afternoon with doubts in many minds. But very soon we saw that not only were the women as capable but also quicker and more efficient. We finished the channels way before sunset and had all the time to make a small celebration and lots of photographs with every one on the new roof top.  Many men, including the village leaders, organisers, the masons and the famous male volunteers would have a different opinion of women's capabilities from today onwards. At least that was the talk of the site this afternoon.