This is the House Some Chick Built

You can imagine the appeal of non-stop sunshine and palm trees to those confined by the chilly winters of Europe and North America. But to use valuable vacation time and money to fly all the way to India - with all of its palm trees and sunshine - for the sole purpose of building houses for charity takes a certain type of remarkable somebody.

I met four such remarkable somebodies at a 'Women's Build' on the outskirts of Bangalore on 11th March. They were Carolyn, Emily, Lesley and Stacey whom had variously flown out from Alaska, Ireland and the States to spend ten days building homes for the poor on a project organised by the charity 'Habitat for Humanity'. H4H building isn't just for women - it's just that the timing of this build coincided neatly with International Women's Week so it became an exclusively female thing - although I did notice that a handful of lucky guys had also slipped through the recruitment net...

The temperature was hovering at around 39C as I walked down the stony road of a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bangalore. Women and children smiled and waved from doorways as I walked by, dogs nibbled at their fleas in the shadows of mango trees, cockerels and chicks skittered from shady hollow to open drain in search of sustenance. Nobody sane was standing in the full glare of the sun if they could help it. Nobody sane was doing much physical work in such heat. Nobody, that is, except the remarkable somebodies at House 11 who were not only standing and working in full sun but also carrying armfuls of bricks. Donning a hat and heavy-duty gloves I pitched in to help them, along with another Bengaluru expat - Anouck, from France.

The ground on which House 11 was being built belonged to a family of five - a married couple with three teenage children. The plot was approximately 10m x 6m square, at the end of which was a roughly constructed three-roomed house. This family was well-off compared to many of their neighbours. On one site, for example, a house was planned for seven members of the same family who currently lived all together in one tent.

The plan for our family was to build a further three-roomed structure perpendicular to their existing home to make an L-shaped dwelling. Habitat for Humanity's role is to draw up the plans, provide expertise and (wo)manpower, advise on health and sanitation and - most importantly - grant an interest free loan for some or all of the build to the homeowner. The principle on which H4H works is to give beneficiaries a hand-up, not a hand-out.

None of us had much experience of building but this was no barrier because H4H uses a mason on each site to do the technical work and make sure the walls are straight. Our mason - no doubt with his good reputation at stake - was keen to do as much of the actual construction as possible himself. However, after having lugged a few thousand bricks onto the site, we managed to persuade him we'd earned the right to do some of the fun stuff too, albeit under his watchful eye.

We mixed and 'packed' (i.e. shoved it between the bricks) cement, arranged layers of bricks on top of wet mortar and made sure the walls were straight using a plumb line, string and straight rod. The family of the house and their friends and relations came over to inspect periodically, and quite a bit of time was spent trying to keep their puppy from hurling itself at our wobbly new walls.

So what motivated these women to fly half way round the world to work as brickies? Well, Lesley's daughter (who is also Carolyn's niece) was the project manager for this build and, as such, a full-time employee for Habitat. One of Lesley and Carolyn's other sisters had done a build at the end of last year and enjoyed it so much that she'd persuaded her sisters to give it a try. Emily's boss had been interested in supporting H4H so she researched it for him and became so seduced by the idea as to give it a go herself. And Stacey, well, she was the most remarkable of all the women I met as this was her third build. Clearly, she's caught the build bug.

And so, for that matter, have I - because I fully intend that this build will be the first of many for me. At the end of our sweltering day we were proud to leave behind the footprint of a house with half-metre high and surprisingly straight walls. All I'm waiting for now is the invitation to check out the finished product!

For more information on Habitat for Humanity go to: www.habitat.org