Home is where heart is

A refugee family from Myanmar will have a new house in Nelson in a fortnight thanks to local builders and some dedicated volunteers from the United States.

Habitat for Humanity, a Christian organisation which builds houses for needy families, is making rapid progress on the house in St Lawrence St.

Thag Boih Cinzah and her husband Ni Kung fled Myanmar with their children in 2006. The couple have four boys.

Mrs Cinzah said she did not have the words to describe the feeling in her heart as she watched the house go up.

‘‘I am thankful for everyone helping. We have a lot of people to support us now.’’ The Cinzahs had taken the week off work to help.

‘‘Yesterday I put up a wall with four other people. Today we painted the window frame,’’ said Mrs Cinzah. The walls were completed on Monday, and the roof supports arrived yesterday.

Habitat for Humanity is a global operation with volunteers coming in teams from around the world.

A team of seven women from the US arrived on Monday to help.

Jackie Clawson, of Montana, put together the team through Facebook and Habitat for Humanity’s website Global Village.

She admitted that the scenery was a big draw. ‘‘ The Lord of the Rings was really pretty, so I wanted to come see New Zealand.’’

Apart from Ms Clawson, none of the team had done work for the organisation previously. Although the group were feeling jet-lagged from 30-hour flights, they were relishing the opportunity to get to grips with power tools.

Mary-Lou Alfonso, of Nevada, said that she had done some building work when she was younger, but this one was the most fun.

‘‘This is definitely the best construction job ever.’’

Ms Alfonso was enjoying the chilly weather, and was even looking forward to some rain.

‘‘I live in a desert. We get three inches of rain in a good year, and we’ve been in a drought for the last seven,’’ she said.

The women were coming to grips with Kiwi culture, learning the important things on their first day – what netball and rugby are, and how to say ‘‘Kia ora’’.

The group will work for seven days out of the two weeks of the project, and by the time they leave, the house will be almost finished.

Local Habitat for Humanity chairman and head builder Rob Silcock said the organisation tried to host one international group a year. He admitted it was getting harder to build the houses, with the increasing price of land.

‘‘We are almost all volunteers, but you need some specialists, and they have to be paid.’’ Habitat’s funding came from charities, grants and donations.

Houses are rented from Habitat for Humanity by the families for five years, after which the family buys their home. At that time, the rent paid is returned to the families for a mortgage deposit.

The charity finished four houses in St Vincent St in May. ‘‘We built three houses last year and four the year before,’’ Mr Silcock said.