Hey hello, we’re Joyce and Joost from the Netherlands and we’ve been travelling through South East Asia for 9 months before we came to Kuching. After 9 months of travelling we really wanted to do something useful and stay in one place a little longer.
On the internet we found out about Habitat for Humanity Kuching. We really liked the concept of their projects. What we most liked about it was that you don’t need any experience, and you can work for as long or as short a period as you wish.
We’ve helped for about 2 weeks on the building site. We’ve worked on 3 different houses in the same village just outside Kuching. In those 2 weeks we’ve helped make the foundation, plaster walls, hammer the inside walls, paint and install windows.
It’s really fun to help the families out and to do something for the community. We learned a lot about other cultures and habits by working with members of the homepartner family and their neighbours. It’s also a great experience to work with other volunteers from Kuching and all over the world (Habitat’s Global Village teams).
Besides that, you do learn a lot about building houses. Even though you’ve no building experience you can make yourself very useful and get a lot of work done. Especially because Eric Yap, the supervisor on the building site, is a very good guide and a really nice guy too.
In the beginning we didn’t know what to expect, but once we’d started, everything just went along smoothly. It’s not hard at all and it’s very much fun to do. After about 2 days we had some blisters and aching muscles but you can make it as hard for yourself as you like. The time flies when you’re on the building site and, before you know it, the day is over.
We really recommend you to help out a couple of days on one of the building sites of Habitat for Humanity. For us it has been very satisfying!
- Joyce & Joost
Wow.. This is cool.. Even Netherlanders helped in this project…
I’m glad I did today