Day 5: International Women’s Day and a new House handed to Satani

Day5 Build: Today was perfect. We started the day by meeting with our interpreter from 2011, Kreeti and we heard how fabulous she is going with study and life. She is doing a masters in rural development and I still believe she will be a future leader of Nepal.
When we arrived at the crossroads before we walked down to our build site Sophie from Habitat had organised rickshaws to travel down to our house (usually a 5 minute walk away) I even got to have a go on one. At the house site we were all very excited to get started to get started but 5 of our team were still on the other bus which had suffered a flat tyre. Our bus had returned to pick them up. A remarkably fast trip apparently as it seemed to take no time at all. At the house we were busily finishing the final piece of rendering and painting painting painting.

Our artist in residence Peter even painted a lovely Nepali flower design.

After lunch we visited the other houses and it was great to see the quality of all the houses – awesome.
The Dedication Ceremony was perfect – facilitated by Meghan we introduced ourselves with our Australian name and our Nepali name, mine was (of course) Parabati a Hindu goddess. Then we all said a word or phrase, Mine was women’s strength. Especially on International Women’s day I felt it appropriate to celebrate Satani’s and her Daughter in-laws strength to carry on in such adversity. Other words were honour, dignity, happy, family, home. Geoff had made a celebration cake and lit candles which we sang Happy House Day to and then Satani cut the ribbon.

She, and the rest of us, were very emotional. We left a photo of the team. As a goodbye they put Tikka on our foreheads and presented us with a bouquet of flowers. As the team leader I received a diorama of religious significance which was very touching.

 
It was hard to leave and say goodbye, but eventually we had to and return on the bus, but at least we leave with the pride of delivering a home to a special woman on a special day International Women’s day. There is so much more still to be done in Nepal but I now that in this week we were one step closer to having a safe and decent home for everybody.