– image above: the local vegetable market on the move 😂 –

22-January-2024, the second week of the Bamboo course and I am very excited and full of energy to begin the actually build of the model we made last week. To give you guys an idea of the location of the course: it’s on a large plot of land and basically somebody’s backyard. It is pretty big and looks a bit like a jungle. On this plot of land, Natalie, the facilitator of the course has already built a big 2-story bamboo building (actually still a work in progress). The very first thing I have to do is to find a suitable spot for ‘my’ little house (it is not really a house but for the sense of simplicity I am going to call it a house from now on). Although the house is pretty small, we have to make sure that our tall and big roof is not colliding with another building or with the trees.

Monday – After finding a good spot for the building, we cleared and cleaned up the area. We can start with digging four holes for the foundation. The house will be resting on foundation pillars which are spaced apart in a square shape; 2 by 2,5 meter. The concrete pillars themselves are not that big, 40x40x50 cm and you would think this is easily done in 1 day. However, it takes us two days to finish this task for the simple reason that we are lacking proper tools to do the job. Local tools do the job, but it just takes more time. There is no decent shovel, and mixing the concrete and cement is all done by hand in a small wheelbarrow (which means we can only make small batches of concrete at a time). We have to make do with what we have but the amount of time mixing the cement is the biggest bottleneck. To speed up the process of finding the correct height of all four pillars, I brought my own line-laser. The local way of working with be with a long and small hose filled with water. Although I do not know the exactly how this works but it’s kind off like a big spirit level. It seems a lot more work to set out a spirit line this way, compared to the line laser. Two pillars are installed today.

Tuesday – We finish the other two pillars in the morning. In the afternoon we visit two bamboo factories where we can see how bamboo poles are treated and what kind of bamboo items are available. We also visit a small workshop where Natalie orders her knives and other tools. As the knife collector that I am, I wanted to get my own bamboo carving knife. Not just for show, but to actually use in the course as well. I ordered one with special Balinese engravings and a leather case for a belt.

Wednesday – After digging in the dirt and pouring cement, we are back to playing with bamboo. A new student from Australia joins us in the construction. Down on the ground we construct both the front and back face of the house. We use different kinds of joining techniques that we learned in the first week and with a small team with made a lot of progress today. Although my work is not perfect, I can definitely see the improvement in my bamboo cutting skills. At the top of the frame, we use fish-mouths techniques and at the bottom of the frame we pinch the standing pillars with two smaller bamboo poles and a rod with nuts.

Thursday – After 1,5 day we finish both faces of the house and today we erect them into the sky. Once again, we use pinching beams to fix the bottoms of both frames together. The tops are joined together with bamboo poles that are sliding into bamboo pins, and they are locked with bamboo nails. The bottom pinching beams are fixed with a long rod and nuts. When both faces are joined together, we install the angled support beams pointing outward. This is part of the roof support.

Friday – The fifth day of our construction. We continue with the load-bearing part of the floor. Every 25 centimeter we place a bamboo pool on top of the pinching beams, and pin it down with bamboo nails. We set out the levelness with a construction string and match every pole with this string. This string is at the desired height, so we can make sure we have a levelled floor. Bamboo spacers are used whenever the pole is too small and doesn’t meet the string. When the bamboo is too large, we will shave it down a bit. The thing with working with bamboo is that not one is the same and they can vary greatly in size and shape. Nothing is perfectly straight with bamboo but we do the best we can. The sides of the floor have a rounded shape and we use a mall (split bamboo) to set out the roundness of the floor. Finally the bamboo poles of the load bearing floor are cut off at the desired location. This is the end of the first week of the building.

So far it is an absolute blast to work with the local guys. We have Made; the head-builder. He is an expert bamboo builder who knows all the tricks in the book. His level of English is basic but enough to get by and to teach me the basics of building. Whenever I don’t understand what Made is saying, we have Dul to translate. Dul is a young guy from Lombok who is also learning the ropes in this field and speaks English well. He is hard working and fun to be around. Finally there is this old guy who walks around and is very friendly, I will call him Bapak. He does not really speak English either but he seems to know how to build and he is a great additional help. The funny thing is that every now and then we have spectators coming to have a look on our progress and sometimes joining and helping. They are familiar faces from last week but I don’t know their names.

Regarding the weather in Bali, it is often hot, humid and has a strong sun. Despite this being so, the pace of our work is still pretty high. It seems the weather is not really stopping these guys from working hard, which is perfect because I want to keep going as well and I don’t let the sun bother me either. We usually start at 8am, we have a long lunch break (between 1 and 1,5 hour), to avoid some of the midday-sun and stop at 5pm. This is basically a full workweek and its hard work, but I am loving it.

At the end of the second week I am very satisfied with the result. We made a lot of progress and the building is starting to take shape. For every week that I am working on this little house I will make a separate time lapse video:

Open in Youtube and select the HD option in settings for better video quality!

After working five long days in the hot and humid temperatures I am very tired, thus it would be good to take a rest in the weekend. But I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have big plans for the weekend. I signed up for a 2-days yoga-handstand workshop in Jakarta together with three of my yoga friends. On Friday evening, right after ‘work’, I drive to the airport to catch my flight to Jakarta. I am looking forward to a fun and new experience. With a gymnastics background I am already familiar with the handstand, but I haven’t done a proper handstand in many, many years. It was an intense and difficult workshop. Combined on Saturday and Sunday, we practiced for 10 hours in total, doing different kinds of handstands, transitions and other exercises. As is common I was the only guy in the yoga class.

At the end of the second day, after 10 hours of exercising, I was deadbeat but grateful for such a wonderful experience. I learned a lot and made some new friends as well. Before flying back to Bali my three friends and I went out for Korean BBQ lunch. We ordered a lot of food because after all that hard work we deserved a good meal. Unfortunately, I could not stay a bit longer in Jakarta to hangout because I had a flight to Bali to catch in the evening. I am back to work the next day on our bamboo construction site.

Before ending this story I would like to share one more short video clip of a cute insect that landed on my hand in Jakarta. I have no idea what it is but it looks so cute and harmless that I just have to share it with you guys:  

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~