Mud, glorious mud...... St Marks and Gunnersbury in Uluvadu

Welcome to the mud bath!

Our bespoke school group from St Marks and Gunnersbury had a tough challenge....build 7 toilets in just 11 days.  Before the group came to work there, Uluvadu had just one toilet facility for the nine families in the village.

Not only will the new toilets help prevent drinking water contamination and the spread of disease, they will also make the lives of the villagers, especially the women, much more comfortable. Currently going to the loo entails walking up to half a kilometer from their homes into the forest at dawn or dusk….a scary thought when you consider that the dense vegetation can hide snakes, scorpions and that there may be elephants in the area.

Home sweet home

The morning commute

Making new friends

Smiles despite the rain

First step to building a toilet is to get digging those foundations.....

Surely the rain is a good thing...it definitely makes the ground softer to dig (although you may end up wearing the mud too!)

Of course when the digging is done, the building work starts and for that you need materials....bring on the Raleigh chain

So after 11 days of digging, carrying materials, cement mixing, bricklaying and painting.... coupled with copious amounts of rain and mud, the group had fully completed 3 toilets (2 were even painted), with the remaining four loos started and all seven cesspits dug. A great achievement by anyone's standards....even more so given the challenging working conditions.

With due cause, celebrations were in order for the inauguration ceremony held on their last day with the villagers and project partners CTRD.


The group deployed early on Monday morning to begin their next challenge... a four day trek through the beautiful tea plantations and forests of Wayanad in north Kerala. On our latest communications with them, they are all safe, well and enjoying themselves....although the stunning scenery hasn't stopped them from asking about the latest cricket scores.


They'll be back at Fieldbase in a couple of days, so keep an eye out for more photos then.