Shade House

So on weekends when I come back to Phnom Penh, I stay with a friend of mine named Ahti. He's an architect and has been working on a Shade House project for the people of Tramoung Chrum. It's a very interesting project, and I wanted to help do some work on it. So this past weekend, Ahti, Leb Ke, Alan, and I went to TC to start building the shade house. The point of this structure is to reduce the brutal sun of the dry season and the battering rains of the rainy season to allow more fragile plants like tomatoes and green peppers to grow.

It's basically a 45m long structure comprised of bamboo arches that support shade cloth, which is perforated plastic sheeting. We got a lot of work done in one day, as evidenced by the series of pictures below. It was a very good time, and It was interesting to build something, because it is so easy to see the change you have wrought. This is in contrast to the shop, which is a more complicated and nuanced process, which makes it harder to immediately see the progress made.



Here is the field where we started. This is basically where the shade house will start, and It ends at the small tree near where the people are grouped. At this time we were laying out surveying lines to keep all the ribs in line with one another.



Then we had to dig all the holes for the bamboo ribs. The TC guys could do this outrageously fast.



Around this time (post hole digging, pre-lashing joist and vertical posts) we had lunch. This picture was taken just before that. We woke up at 6:00 to get out there, and my breakfast consisted of a coffee and single piece of biscotti. By the early afternoon, I was pretty ready for some food. That's why I'm looking so sullen in this picture.



We then planted all the ribs and began lashing the vertical posts and the horizontal joisty-thing (I dont know what to properly call it.)



This guy was a master of lashing pieces of bamboo together. I surmised that he was a fisherman. Also, as a side note, nothing makes one feel weak like working with people who survive on hard labor. This guy's forearms looked like bionic steel cords or something. Ridiculous.


Barn Raising! At least thats sort of what it felt like. Also, the arched structure reminded me of a cathedral, so I named it the "Tramoung Chrum Cathedral of Organic Agriculture."


Then some TC guys lashed the ribs to the horizontal joist. Thats leb ke on the left.



This was the end result. Pretty cool. Once we demonstrated the basic operation, The TC guys ran with it. They are going to complete the shade house in the next few weeks. I'll probably go out there sometime soon to see whats going on.

Thats the story. Hope everyone's well.

Take Care,

Ned.

p.s. this picture just makes me laugh. And that's Ahti, by the way.