Pensri's father built this house in about 1937. It has stood here ever since but now it is moving. It moved, or was moved, about ten days ago and will move again before too long, I hope. The men who are doing the moving have taken a break for harvesting, but they are expected back any day now.
The house didn't look like this when it was built because like the more recent houses on either side, and like all the houses in Phana at that time, it was built on stilts. Even when I first came to stay in the house in 1970, it didn't look like this.
Several changes have been made. The currugated iron rooof had been added not long before 1970 and was seen as a big improvement on the old wooden roof. Since 1970, the ground floor has been enclosed with brick, the old wooden, folding doors replaced by the sliding security gate, the windows and window frames replaced more than once. And most disastrously for the house and the people who have lived in it, the road out front, originally just a sandy track, has gradually been raised higher and higher. For several years this caused the downstairs room to be flooded in the rainy season but eventually (and again, in at least two stages) drains have been put in along the road. But getting into the house became a matter of going down several steps, and then later a ramp when my sister-in-law bought a motor-bike.
This closer-up picture might make the situation clearer.
But the house has stood empty for the last ten years, since Pensri's sister died. Her three children are scattered, two in Bangkok and one in Lamphun, and they each have families born and growing up there, though they come up to Phana to pay respects to ancestors most years. The house belongs to the eldest son, as does the family farm, but the three of them effectively have joint ownership by mutual consent. The fields are farmed by a second cousin who lives in the soi alongside the house and most people in the family get a bit of the rice each year.
For several years now the older members of the family have talked about renovating the house but it hasn't been quite clear what the purpose of that would be, other than out of respect for their parents and in memory of all the people who lived in the house in their childhood years. But finally minds have been made up, agreements made, money collected, plans made. I will write about these in a later post.
For now, this is what was done first. The walls enclosing the downstairs area have been knocked down. The bricks and mortar will serve as the base for the new ground floor, which must be raised to the level of the road, or above it, preferably.
And here is the house after the ground has been brought up to road level by filling with sand.
In this picture you can see how the house has been moved back from the road, on some sort of trolleys apparently.
Unfortunately, this was done while we were in Ubon. We had expected that it would be done the following day and we would have watched, but the men worked hard and late so that they could go harvesting the next day, and so we missed it.
And that is how the house stands at the moment. The next stage will be to lift it higher, but that will have to wait about a week because the men who will do the lifting are the ones who have gone off to do some harvesting. Harvesting is better paid, and can't wait, so that's fair enough. We will just have to be patient.
Comments