House Building with Tabitha

Janne - founder of Tabitha

 Morning of Day 4: We went to Tabitha and met the founder of Tabitha Janne Ritskes who started Tabitha in 1994. She gave us a good overview of Cambodia’s history.  She also told us the do’s and don’ts in the village where we were going to build on Saturday.  Things such as, not to touch the children younger than 2 and now to pick them up or tell them they were cute.  As these would put an omen upon the family and they would have to give their child to us to take home.  She also warned us about the flood waters and viper snakes.

Tabitha Cambodia is a non-profit organization.  All funds are used to help the very poor in Cambodia through programs that focus on personal and financial development.  It was started in 1994 and has now reached over 500,000 people.  Tabitha has many programs such as, the Savings Program, Family Partnerships, Water Wells, Piglets, Cottage Industry, Patchwork Quilts and Housebuilding.

House #1

Day 6:  House Building – We all got up and had a simple breakfast.  It was about an hour bus ride to the village where we were building.  It was a beautiful day!  Everyone was healthy and ready to finally do the build.  There were 25 of us so 5 teams of 5.  Each team had one of the 5 guys on it and one of the 5 teachers who had done a Tabitha build before.  My team consisted of Carl, Abby, Kristy and Jasmine.  We were a great team and had a lot of fun building.  There was a nice breeze for most of them time.  Each of us bearing the white Cambodia build t-shirts and the Tabitha checked scarf, we had our hammers and work gloves in hand, we balanced our steps on some floating boards until we safely reached our first house.

My job nail nails into the floor boards.  Our first set of nails we almost impossible to get in straight but then we got longer nails and I was feeling a little more successful!

Despite the 1 foot of water which you could not see through each group built 2 houses in about 5 hours.  We had no injuries and everyone was able to do what they could.  10 families were extremely happy on this day.  The family has to save / give $30 towards the house; which takes them about 2 years to save.  2 years!  We (Tabitha/the house builders) raise the rest of the money.  Each house costs about $1000.

Family of house#1

Thought of the Day: 

~ Hard labor is not my forte!  ~