"Parma System" helping rebuild Bigu Faster and Safer

Ram Krishna Sharma
Communication Officer, NSET-Baliyo Ghar

Family of Shanti Bhujel Back to their Normal life after Gorkha Earthquake

Parma System is a social practice of giving and taking help in labor or services turn by turn (Alopalo) while carrying out major social, cultural and agricultural activities. The practice of Parma is a culture of performing each other’s work turn by turn collectively. This is mostly prevalent in rural and agricultural societies.

This system is firmly prevailing in the remote areas of Dolakha where people seem busy rebuilding their flattened houses. While reconstructing houses people from neighborhood form a group and start constructing houses of people within the team.
The cycle of one 'Parma' is accomplished after building the houses of all the members of group or working the man-days equal to the man days the people have contributed. On an average around 10 masons including labors work in the Parma System for around 20 days to complete a typical two roomed stone masonry house i.e. around 200 men are employed in constructing a house and hence the house owner has to contribute this very number while constructing the houses of the people who were involved earlier. This very system of Parma is contributing a lot to the people in Bigu of Dolakha to accelerate the reconstruction campaign in Bigu. And definitely, it is helping build Safer and Better Bigu as all of the members working together are trained masons.

Trained mason Akkal Bahadur Magar with his wife in front of their house

One of the trained masons in the team is Akkal Bahadur Magar, who is a carpenter, bar bender and mason. He looks after his saw mill at morning and evening but at day time he is involved in masonry works. He says, "We passed 2 years of miseries, but now our village is turning to be seismic resilient as we are vigorously working to erect our flattened house. We are a 15 membered team who has almost finished our own houses and shifted to build the villagers houses. Had not we formed a team to work together the reconstruction of our village would have been in sorry condition. Team has strengthened us to work collectively, helped convince the house-owners to build houses according to the knowledge we received during mason training and speed up the pace of reconstruction."

When we reached to the house of Mrs. Antari Magar in Gyalbasingh-Bigu, Antari was harvesting millet with her colleagues. She said, "Males are reconstructing our village through Parma System which our culture of doing agricultural works is the foundation. As our labor sharing culture in agriculture seems successfully implemented and works get done, Parma system in rebuilding our flattened houses has indicated the consistent and robust reconstruction." As Antari claims, no doubt, the houses being reconstructed and rebuilt seem alike in terms of structure and earthquake resistant elements injected in. It's been possible only because all of the mason members in a team had developed their skills through mason training. Baliyo Ghar Program is organizing such mason trainings and awareness campaigns in Bigu.

Timber Banded Houses Adding Beauty

Bigu Village, one of the wards of Bigu Rural Municipality is deprived of transport facilities, though rough road reaches there. Being connected with China border, it's one of the most remote areas of Northern Dolakha. Bigu dwellers need to travel more than 5 hours to Singati, a market hub for their daily essentials. Carrying cement, steel rods and other construction materials to the village is a tough task for them and the trained masons know it's not necessary to use the concrete to rebuild quake resistant houses. Hence, they have promoted to use locally available materials like timbers, carved beautiful stones etc. House-owners are convinced in using timber bands in their house after some treatments which can be seen in almost all houses. The black painted timber bands, smooth and equal sized stones placed within, colorful doors / windows and roof with blue zinc sheets have added the beauty in every house settled in Bigu.

Group of women harvesting millet in front of newly built house of Akhhal Bahadur Magar and Antari Magar

"We learnt the idea about the bands, vertical reinforcements, treatment of the timber before using them and using locally available materials while reconstructing a house during the mason training. And of course, we have imparted the skills and knowledge among house-owners and promoting to use the timber band with treatment," Dabal Bahadur Shrestha, a Baliyo Ghar trained mason told. According to Dabal, timbers can be cured by using Black Japan paint, Coal tar and other anti-termite chemicals.

772 houses were fully or partially damaged during Gorkha Earthquake and now 214 houses have already built in last days of December 2017. "Almost 30 percent of the people of Bigu either live in Kathmandu or America or European countries, so I think only 70 percent of total flattened houses would be rebuild here. But quite satisfying fact here is, all the houses supposed to be rebuild will resist future earthquakes," Chief of ward-7, Mr. Nimchiri Sherpa said.