Day 15, June 11th
We all woke up filled with anticipation and excitement for concrete pour day #1. The floor slab of our building is massive, 20’ by 30’ plus the front door landing. After days of meticulously cutting, placing, and tying rebar, we had created a beautiful structural piece, ready to take on its role as the “bending” component of reinforced concrete. As the team somewhat-forced/somewhat-encouraged Sarah and Jane (the non civil/architectural engineers) to learn, reinforced concrete is an ideal building material because the concrete resists “pushing” (compressive) forces, while the steel handles the “bending” (tensile forces). Today’s pour was critical in making sure these two materials were bonded perfectly to create a strong, sturdy bond that met our design standards.
We arrived at site early and were greeted by more workers than had ever been on site before, including a good number of female workers. We were also greeted by a special surprise… a concrete mixer! After days of simple hand-mixing, we knew things were about to get serious when we saw the capacity of this machine.
The process of pouring the slab was an all-hands-on deck operation. Some workers were hauling dry materials, some manning the mixer, some, some moving buckets of concrete (multiple on the ground going back and forth to a scaffold that reached the roof and others on the roof delivering the buckets to the specific location on the slab). Finally, our site engineer and Ken were performing quality assurance checks of the whole process.
Because the process was so intricate, the team had trouble determining where we would best fit in. As seven able-bodies, we wanted to use our strength and passion to lighten the load and speed up the process. But we were also aware that our lack of construction skills and inexperience carrying such heavy buckets of concrete might do the exact opposite: slow things down. This was one of the biggest challenges we faced with our PUC implementation trip. Our wonderful in-class lessons and cultural activities gave us the capacity to see both sides of this challenge, but being in these situations tested our choices. Was it selfish to want to help during the pour, just to get experience and feel helpful? Or was it instead necessary to make cultural connections with the workers and engineers by performing tasks together? We continue to ponder these questions.
The team ultimately ended up determining that while carrying the normally-filled buckets of concrete was potentially too heavy for us, we could serve the roles of getting concrete from the mixer chute and passing the buckets to the roof. It was challenging, continuous, concrete-y work.
A few people stopped by on the road to watch the comical scene: Sarah entertaining curious children slightly away from the construction site, Janet continually asking us if we were alright, moments of passing a water cup among workers and small smiles as the only distraction. Through that cyclical process, the concrete was moved, slowly but surely filling the slab.
The team had a much-needed energizing late lunch of pot pots, tomato rice AND butter rice… an utter delight. Sore from the work and sweaty from the heat, we still managed to share laughs and keep up the ongoing astrology discussions (which also usually ended up as opportunities for more laughs).
We returned to the site for the end of the pour, bringing cold sodas to the workers. We all sat together in the shade of the building, marveling at the beauty of the completed slab. There were selfies, games with the children, and an appreciation for the mental and physical challenges of the day.
We were gifted with another perfect sunset that night, and the team sat on the roof contemplating the highs and lows of the day, while listening to the one and only Kacey Musgraves. The long-term coordination and engineering had culminated not in discussions of technical issues, but rather in reflective conversations about the role of PUC, as well as the limitations and benefits of projects such as ours.
Zia Lyle
PUC India 2019