We're Making Blocks in Cambodia

When you volunteer to help build a school in Cambodia as a first time Rotary Sweat Equity participant, you can’t be too sure what that will involve. Well, as we have learned, it involves getting down to basics.

We knew that we would be working with cement blocks, but what we had not fully appreciated was that we would first have to make - yes I said make - the cement blocks. You might not have made cement blocks before, so I will give you the information necessary to make your own cement blocks, if you find yourself in need of doing so.

Many people would expect that you would have a cement mixer and that you would feed the ingredients into a revolving drum that would mix the materials to the appropriate consistency and then fill a cement block mould. But we are in Cambodia and we don’t have a cement mixer at the moment, so we are doing the job in the Cambodia way - simple hard work.

The process is overseen by our Cambodian workmate and 23 year old supervisor Nang, who showed us how to make cement, with nothing more than a shovel and a flat piece of ground and, of course, the necessary ingredients. Fortunately, important preparatory work had already been done at the site of the future Bakong Technical College, where the materials had been assembled and a cement pad had already been made as the assembly and drying area for the cement blocks.

The essential ingredients for a batch, are 14 large pails of medium coarse red sand, 100 kilos of Portland cement and the right amount of water. How do you know what the right amount of water is? That’s where experience comes in and why Nang has his job and why we were on the shovels. First, shovel the 14 pails of sand from the sand pile and place them in the working area - flat ground beside the cement pad - and then add the cement. Dry mix them by shovel until fully mixed - about a 10 minute exercise and then the hard part - add the water to the required amount and mix thoroughly - another 10 - 15 minutes until the perfect consistency is achieved, as determined by our supervisor. We got better as time went on in spelling off each other so that the three shovels were kept in constant use by the five or six volunteer labourers. This gave new meaning to the term Sweat Equity - or as some of the T-shirts said - Sweet Equity.

The moulds for the blocks are either single or double size. They have to be lubricated with kerosene (applied with a paint brush every third use or so). Fill the mould by shovel, drop the mould from a height of about eight inches three times - not two or four - but three times to settle the ingredients and fill the mould fully. With a hand hewn wooden mallet, tamp down the mixture by applying several firm blows, scrape off the excess with the edge of the mallet and voila, you have a cement block ready to go to the next stage. Carry the mould to the cement pad, place it carefully and then turn on its side (if the consistency is right it won’t spill) and then comes the tricky part. With the mould in just the right place, quickly invert it so that the mould is upside down. Too slow and the ingredients will fall out. It is all in the flick of the wrists as we learned with a few failures having to be scraped off the pad and recycled to the mixing area. Remove the mould carefully and leave the blocks to dry for 24 hours. There you have it. Yesterday we did only 137 blocks, but with better organization and technique, we got to 227 today. They get added to the drying pile of blocks and count toward the quota of 2,000 that are needed.

Tylenol and electrolyte consumption is on the increase, but otherwise the work crew is no worse for wear. Frequent water breaks are essential and boy does lunch taste good after all this physical endeavour.

Brian Westlake