Zen Garden III - Bromley Kid Retreat

This is Axel again. Remember this space? I had it ear-marked for a Zen rock garden. Complete with Japanese white rounded stones that would be raked into perfect patterns.

Well, I had to give it up. The thing about Nepal is there are NO playgrounds. There is no place for the kids to go have fun playing and if I did a rock garden here it would just be one more place I didn't want them to mess up.

So I bought some bamboo and wood and talked to my head guard about what I wanted to build. Being a guard is mostly boring. So having an opportunity to build stuff really makes this guy happy.

So I had an idea just to make two quasi houses and we began to build this:

The kids already started playing on it.

It looks like I am working hard on it doesn't it? Truthfully I am not. I am getting ready to go to work. You can see behind me they already cut the bamboo into walls and kind of took over my initial design.

Again, here I am looking like I am working hard. Good picture (except for the huge rear end), not really what happened. These guys know how to work bamboo. Where to cut it, how to join it, how to make it smooth. They are masters at building stuff out of it, and it is so cheap you can really go crazy on buying it.

Here it is finished in a week. We are laying small crushed stone for the fire pit part and sand for the play area.

The back house has two rooms separated by bamboo slat walls. It has a metal top to keep the rain out.

Laying sand. Dona being very helpful. The head guard is in the blue and my driver is in the white.

Dona playing on it. Notice that the bamboo has been scraped smooth so no slivers. ALL the pieces were done like this.

Monkey bars. This is the 'pirate' side. Terah is going to make a skull and cross bones flag .

Notice the little ladder (in bottom left on the pirate part) going from one level to another. This is the kind of stuff they make without even thinking about it.

It has monkey bars on one side going to the other and a bamboo bridge to play Indian Jones II. Remember the part he made them all fall into the crocodiles?

Let the games begin. I am getting old. I used to only do this stuff myself. If I couldn't do it, it wouldn't get done. Now I am happy to have my guys tell me what materials they need in the morning, I give my driver the money and he goes and gets it for them.

In the end we passed some cash out to all four of them who did it. Total cost for four guys doing one week's work on it: $80. Which was a lot for them. When we leave it will be donated to an orphanage.