Thanks to all who have helped make this possible…Krishna (our Nepali Guide and Friend), Convent Taiping Seventy six, AUG’s staff and Institution partners, Family and Friends.

Thank you all. Here are some photos of the ceremony.

Unveiling of the banner to officiate the ceremony start

Tin Wong  was invited as Chief Guest , honoured to be there. Let the ceremony begins

A big band comprising of horns, drums, flutes played customary music to welcome us

Everyone from Village Elders, Parents, Students, Children all join in the party.

Students anxiously waiting for the ceremony to start

Getting a bird’s eye view of the ceremony.

Love the colours and pomp to go with the occasion.

Extract from CP and Shirley :-

We are honoured to be invited to a once in a life time event. The official opening of the school at Dhading was made possible by the tenacity of Tin Wong and friends.

We became important “Ministers” that day, the villagers showered us with Music, performances and warm hospitality, a memory we will hold for a long time.

Once again…Dhanya baht Alice & Tin

CP posing a musing shot for Shirley

Don’t mess around with these tough ladies.. they do all the hard work

Nice shot of the village elders

Two of my biggest supporter for the day

A nice amusing shot for the album to reflect the happy occasion

Receiving the plaque with thanks and show of appreciation for the work done

Thank you from the principal

Giving a speech of thank you and feeling very honoured

Giving a speech in Nepali much to the laughter of the crowd

Many prizes to give out, best performing student in each year level, boys and girls equally clever

The Hindu Goddess of Wisdom,Saraswati (, Sarasvatī) Also the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, arts, and learning.

The young students put up some dancing show for our entertainment

We all enjoy it with much laughter and fun

Group photo with students

Group photo with the teachers

Yesterday, I took two tailors to Chakradevi Primary School Dhading. We were there to take measurement of clothing size for the school children to make them school uniforms, kindly funded by the Taiping Convent Girls.

Students queuing to have their measurement taken

Measurement recorded for each student: pant, shirt and scarf

Last but not least, everyone will soon have a new uniform

The tailor said he will need between 10 to 12 days to finish making the school uniform. When it is completed I will bring the uniform there and distribute to each of the children.

The tailor will be making a short and pant for each of the boy and for the girl a shirt and a scarf. I feel that it will better if we can help and donate to make each of the boy and girl a give simple sweater for the winter. Winter is already upon them. It is very cold there. What do you think? Let me know if you are agreeable. (Yes, AUG has agreed to the purchase of winter sweaters for the 30 school kids.)

As for the school building, as per your instructions, I have ordered the metal railing for the top part of the wall (currently it is not covered) for the school. This also will be ready in ten days’ time which is the same time as the school uniform being ready.

Thanks all the update for now.

Today, Indira (from PA Nepal) and I travel to Dhading to do a final inspection of the school re-building. It’s so good to see the children being taught in the classrooms. They are smiling and studying.

Although we have not got the final approval from the local authority in Dhading for teaching yet, I think it won’t be any problem receiving the complete certificate of our school.

Here are some photos.

Children playing in the school compound

Children studying in the classroom

Thank you to everyone who has helped out, particularly the villagers of mothers and fathers and all the surrounding village people.

Hooray!  What is needed now is to finish off with all the minor touches work such as cleaning, painting touch up, furnishing the classroom properly.

Five classrooms, a teacher’s room and a kitchen , all nearly completed

Recess break time for the children

Small classes have started in one of the classroom.  See photos of the children. They are so happy that they finally have got proper desk to write on and chair to sit on.

See the smiling children with their school furniture

So beautiful to see them happy to be in school

Once all the minor work has completed, we shall organise an official opening ceremony of the school. well done to everyone in helping us and following us on our journey to rebuild this school.

Nameste!

Normally, the new school semester would start today. However, the school rebuilding isn’t complete yet due to the lack of labour and difficulty accessing the worksite.

We plan to keep working as fast as possible. The fourth stage of the project will be finished in about three to four days.

The fifth stage of the rebuild will not take too long.

For the partitions in the school building, we used plywood boards and iron rods, which we bought from the market in Kathmandu.

We also ordered 18 sets of benches and desks (six sets for each classroom), which will be ready in three to four days.

For the kindergarten classroom, we installed carpets as benches and desks may not be good for the younger children. Last but not least, we have a painter who will paint the benches, desks, doors and walls of the new school.

Nameste

Sorry for the late update. Actually it took long time to finish second stage of our school work. At the first, difficult to find professional labor for the wall because every one are busy for their own house. And lots of materials need to supply for that. Not easy to get transport there. So it took long time that we expected. Any way it is nearly finish. Yesterday I was in Dhading, Contractor said that it will be finish in 4-5 days.

For the last stage of the school work will be make partition wall with ply, simple paint on wall, furniture (Desk+bench, need 18 set of that for 3 class room (6 each classroom), enamel paint on door and windows and some other misellios. For that I will discuss with Indera and contractor and let you know. This is all for now.

Yesterday I was in Dhading to see the work progress of our Dhading school construction project.

I visited the factory where they make bricks (cement type) for us. This is much bigger than the normal brick size.

Everything has been going smoothly so far. Finger crossed.

Watering the bricks to keep it moist.

Today we had meeting at PA Nepal with our builder.  We calculated the tentative cost for the second stage of our project.

It will be around USD$6500. In this costing, it will cover the following:-

1 Building the walls with materials (bricks, cement, sand and all other necessary transportation),

2 Plastering all the walls with cement

3 Fittings of doors and windows (iron) including fitting charge and transportation

4 Cementing the floor of classrooms

5 Labour costs

After the long and tedious task of negotiating with Nepal’s bureaucracy and going through the proper channel, we managed to come to an agreement for the project to go ahead. AUG teamed up with PA Nepal (Prisoner Assistance Nepal) to initiate rebuilding the school, 10 months on after the earthquake hit this region. Yes, it took us this long to come to an agreement but it’s better late than never, I suppose!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank to our man on the ground, Krishna, who has been most persistent, will lead and supervise the whole project on our behalf. As you can imagine, this task of rebuilding is enormous. Firstly he will negotiate for the land tenure, making sure that the school land is approved for rebuilding. Next, the land will need to be cleared of fallen debris from the earthquake. As Dhading village sits on a hill slope, this makes the task of clearing the land all the more difficult. But through all these problems and difficulties, Krishna has been patient and kept us all in the loop on the progress.

Stage#3 – Building the Structural Foundation

Iron trestles and cement being transported by lorries to the nearest point reachable by motor vehicles. From this point, manpower was required to carry them to the village.

Iron and steel welded together forming the support structure for the rooftop, and iron poles carefully measured and cut prior to delivery.

Each piece of material was carried from the main road, across bridges, to the village, which is a good 2-3 hours hike away. The unsealed path is also accessible by motorbike, although it is bumpy most of the way.

The iron poles and roof trestles being carried to the school site by the villagers.

Here are the poles and trestles being assembled “upside down” then slotted in place.

Once this is done, everyone pitched in to “flip” it over to slot into the pre-dug column holes.

The column holes were then filled with cement to hold up the iron poles.

Making sure that the pillar structure is strong and will withstand future earthquakes.

The cement mixture was poured into the column holes to hold the iron poles.

The contractor’s team then took over the technical task of bolts and nuts. Here the roof top joints needed to be carefully bolted together and re-measured for the careful laying of the zinc top.

It’s an able-bodied person’s job from here on.

Piece by piece the zinc top was loaded onto the roof top for assembly and attachment.

It looks good from the top.

It was going to be night, but they were still at it…

The supervisor was looking on.

Working hard till nightfall…finally nailed in the last piece.

Krishna (centre) posing with the villagers.

Krishna with the contractor’s team of workers.

Yesterday, I and our appointed contractor/builder drove from Kathmandu to Dhading. In the village, we marked out the allocated plot for the basement of the School.

We marked all the lot corners and instructed the local villagers (acting as labourers) to dig the up 12 column holes of size 2 feet by 2 feet at 4 feet deep at all the appropriate marked location (as per size above ) .

We brought along 1 truck full of sand, 1 truck full of small pieces of rocks and 15 sacks of cement, weighing 5kg each for the basement foundation.

As there is not electricity in this village, for the welding (joinery of each piece of iron pole to each other) we ordered all the folding trestle with pre- bolt according to the NUTBOLT system. This is pre- done in Kathmandu.

We will have it delivered to Dhading in a few days’ time. As we cannot drive straight to the village , we must offload all our materials by the main road side and then get all possible manpower to carry piece by piece to the village. This will take 3 hours of walking with their load. At Dhading we will unload all the materials at the suspension bridge, road junction then we will have to carry all the heavy iron and cement materials to cross the bridge, then upload again another time to another lot of lorries and drive into the village using another route to Dhading.

For the second stage of our work (wall, window, door, partition, floor plaster with cement etc , I will work out another costing as part of our 2nd stage of progress work.

In Stage #1 – we will build the basic structure of the building with iron trestle roof structure and iron clad pole/pillar structure and zinc roof. We dug the hole in to the ground around 4 feet (depends on ground label) and fixed with cement, sand and rock. We use 12 iron poles as a pillar. In total, we use 1650kg of iron and 400kg of zinc sheet (and some nut + bolt) to complete it. All these materials we had outsource from our local market but it is little expensive because it is just after our blockade and problem with India. There are 5 workers from contractors and it took 5 full days to fix it for them. We will all stay in Dhading for 5 nights to complete 1st stage.

The month of March is a good season to start our project, just before the monsoon season beginning in June and hence will get the whole project ready. Also right now, the workers are available the ground is solid hard and no water overflow problem.
We are planning to finish it before new session (3rd week of April). It is hard to get workers because; most of them are building their own house which was damaged by earth quake

There is no electricity at Dhading. We carry our own generators from Kathmandu for the entire duration of the project.

For the second stage to build the walls, we need cement, sands, stones, bricks (we are using cement bricks). And for the doors and window we are using iron and steel. Wood doors and Windows, will take long time to make and costly. And also there is shortage of labourers to make it. For all this I will talk with Indira from PA Nepal and finalise the total costing.

Yes, compare to before blockade, the market price is 20 to 40% more now. Most of the construction materials comes from India and it is more costly now a days compare before. But materials can get in market.
for example :-
bricks has gone up in price from Rs 7,500 to Rs 8,500 for 1000 units,
cement from Rs610 to Rs650 for a sack ( 50kg)
wood from Rs5,000 to Rs5,800 for 1 cubic feet length
raw materials is more easily available for purchase and there is no need to depend on India for it ?

I will update Stage #2 soon.