Niue aid project begins in earnest
The site at Niue Foou Hospital where the day-bed facility will be built.
Day 1: Structural posts and beams are in place.
Day 2: The roof structure is in place; the building is beginning to take shape.
The shipping container is lowered onto its footings in preparation for becoming a services block.
The modified container with its sheltering structure completed.
It’s not all work for Matt and his friends from Rathkeale College who have joined him on the project.
Over the past nine months, Wairarapa teenager Matt Wilson has combined his love of architecture and design to undertake an aid-style project for a hospital in Niue. In his second instalment he talks about his impressions of Niue, starting the build, and the challenges the team faced.
It’s the heat that hits me when I get off the plane in Niue.
We – that’s myself, my dad, our Niuean New Zealand guide Rennie Aleke and a team of school friends from Rathkeale College – find it hard enough loading our bags onto the back of our taxi truck in these temperatures, let alone building a whole new wing for Niue Foou Hospital.
But that’s what we’re here to do over the next two weeks while we’re on “The Rock”.
As we bump along the road, heading for our accommodation, it doesn’t take me long to realise what a beautifully rustic and relaxed place this is. Although, Niue’s wild and raging coastline is anything but laid back and makes it unique from the idyllic and gently lapping beaches of the other Pacific Islands.
But like I say, we’re not here for the sights – or the yummie roti wraps we discover at Gill’s Indian Restaurant in the capital of Alofi – and the building site beckons.
At the moment the area is mostly a barren and dusty piece of dirt, even though the locals have already started pouring concrete foundations for the build.
The day-bed wing for elderly patients will be made up of five units, a landscaped garden, and a services block inside a modified shipping container – the same container we used to transport all the materials from New Zealand – donated by Royal Wolf.
Our first day is taken up with unpacking timber, building materials, tools and other construction gear from the container. The main construction push over the first few days is getting the structural posts and beams in place for the respite building (a stand-alone structure located opposite the container block).
Given the limited time frame we have for the project, one of the main challenges is doing much of the work by hand. You see, we only packed a few power tools in the container because come time to go home we wouldn’t have any means of getting them back to New Zealand.
Not that using hammers and handsaws slows us down too much and after three days, when the roof of the respite building starts to take shape, it’s a realisation for me that the project has become a reality.
It may have started out as a challenge from my dad to do something for a community in need, but now, nine months and many thousands of fundraising dollars later, it’s actually happening.
