On Monday August 6th we loaded up a barge with materials for the fish pen building project, including 72 bags of fish food, yards of netting and string, 6 large plastic barrels and a metal frame consisting of 8 metal rods. Because we needed the barge to carry all the materials our journey was 3 hours from Thongphapum instead of the usual 1 hour the regular boats take. However, the weather held out on us and we had a quite scenic and beautiful 3 hour ride with limestone mountains surrounding us and tiny villages in our periphery. We did not arrive in the village until fairly late in the afternoon on Monday so we just unloaded the materials and investigated the village a bit. We ended up staying at the local pastor's house after being fed quite a feast.The next day we had a town meeting with the people of Piloki in the morning to discuss plans for the fish raising project and the homestay program. Through this meeting concerns, comments and suggestions were aired on both sides to ensure that both of these programs run as smoothly as possible. At this meeting it was decided that the villagers would grow a fish similar to red snapper instead of the originally planned catfish because the former is more profitable and easier to sell in the local markets. That afternoon we set to work measuring out the netting and cutting the appropriate lengths. The work was split into two teams: the inner plastic netting which has smaller holes and will hold the fingerlings initially and the outer rope netting which will hold the fish once they get bigger. The team working on the inner plastic netting created a rectangular shaped box and worked in pairs to sew up the seams with rope. The other team worked on feeding rope through the outer netting and sewing up seams as well. We worked late into the afternoon and had another delicious meal that night.
On Wednesday morning we worked on finishing up sewing all the seams and started putting together the metal frame. For the framing work we relied mostly on the locals because they seemed to be seasoned pros and knew exactly what to do. We finished up everything and launched the finished project on Wednesday afternoon. Although the numbers varied, we had about 15-20 people from Piloki village helping up with the fish nets and without them we could not have finished so quickly. Because the Piloki village is situated on the banks of the dam, the local people seem at home on the water therefore I think this project will be really good for them. They will be relying on their local resources to make this project successful and generate income. The biggest challenge they will face in the future is reducing the cost of feeding the fish as store-bought feed can be quite pricey.
Dana Givens
Baan Dada Volunteer
