In summer 2003, I participated in a workcamp in France for three weeks to renovate a structure (mostly building a stone roof) over a drinking pool for animals near a small village (<3000 people) in rural France, Chambon sur Lignon. The thirteen of us (everyone else being from Spain, France, the Czech Republic, Greece, or Germany) slept in the same room for those three weeks and spent the time working, cooking, playing, drinking, and laughing together, and having one of the best time of our lives...
Chambon sur Lignon Workcamp (Jump to Paris)
Many of these pictures were taken by other people at the camp.
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The whole group! |
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A shot of our worksite when we were already partly done with the work. The stone wall was already there, but we dismantled part of it, dug a trench to build a new stone wall, dismantled the old roof, and rebuilt it. |
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Our lovely kitchen, where we ate our three meals a day. Breakfast was at 7 am, since we started work at 8 am and stayed until 1 pm. Lunch would be at 2 pm and then free time (which sometimes turned into naptime!) |
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The room we shared for the duration of the workcamp. We were staying at the village school while there were no classes for the summer. |
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Hana (Czech Republic) shaving the bark off the soon-to-be beams of the new roof. |
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Jana (Germany), Zuzana (Czech Republic), and Rafa (Spain) fixing up the stone wall. |
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I really don't know what happened here. |
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The forest to the east of the worksite. |
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A path heading north from the worksite. |
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The view to the west... |
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...and the fields to the south. |
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The site in a half-finished state. |
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Martin#3 (Czech Republic) "hammering" (or just posing). |
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An Albanian refugee in Chambon, just "for fun," came to work with us most days. |
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Evgenia (Greece) and Zuzana. The stone we used to tile the roof is a special material that is only found in this region on France, which has historically used it both decoratively and functionally on its buildings. It has to be shaped with hammers at the edges into a very specific shape for its position on the roof, which is decided beforehand based on the natural shape and thickness of the slab. |
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Break time! |
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Setting the stones on the roof, which was done with clay and nails |
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Almost done... |
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Roof workers. |
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We weren't on break all the time...that's just when we get the chance to take pictures, really! |
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The blond trio: Jana, Zuzana, and Hana. |
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Some of the girls! |
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We show off the roof in its essentially finished state. |
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Only 5-6 people would be working at the pool on any given day. The rest of the time we would paint things around the village or fix up a hiking path that had become somewhat unhikable. |
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Painting a fence that happened to be in front of a cute little house. |
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Every day, we would rotate cooks: two people would stay behind to cook for the entire group. I'm glad I wasn't the only one that didn't know how to cook, much less for thirteen people! |
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Evgenia seems to have lost something... |
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The town square of Chambon would fill every night with families (or just old men) playing petanque. During the day, we sometimes played chess at the giant chessboard. |
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The entrance to the school where we were staying. |
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Train tracks running through the village. |
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The view walking to the grocery store about a mile away. |
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A little electric car (or something...) |
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Evgenia and Katerina, best friends from Greece. Some of the group would play football, once even in a tournament against other teams from around the area. Katerina was the resident coach. |
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We visited Skanzen, something of an outdoor museum to the stones we were using the build the roof. There were amazing miniatures of actual buildings in the region that had used the stones; the miniatures used tiny stone chips. |
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The stones can be shaped precisely enough that notes (and songs) can be played on them when hung and hit. |
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I don't know why there was a blue plastic slide in the middle of Skanzen... |
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Table tennis was popular in this village for some reason. |
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Some of the boys... |
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We went to a "tree park" where, attached to harnesses, we could travel between the tops of trees, either by a pulley or by an "obstacle" course. |
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Zuzana gets prepared at the tree park... |
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At night, we would play frisbee, football (the European kind), cards, or just listen to music and dance around, once we were lucky enough to get a stereo! |
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We went to a nearby town to get bikes for a trip to the river. It was my first time on a bike since high school! |
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Playing chess against a family from Chambon... |
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Starting on the 8 km walk/hike to the nearby village of Tence. We were visiting the other workcamp there for their Bastille Day celebration, July 14, although we came in time for their one-day-early celebration. |
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Taking a break along the river. |
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Another break on the way to Tence... |
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Barley fields along our walk. |
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A little house hidden in the trees. |
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A peek at the river through the trees...probably the only picture I have that captured what the countryside was really like! |
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A valley nearing sunset. |
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Me and Rafa in the living room of the Tence workcamp. We found out that for the sixteen people at Tence, there was only one bathroom and one shower - which made us feel pretty pampered in comparison, since everything we needed was in the Chambon school gym! |
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Jana and Evgenia toasting with our homemade sangria (the best sangria I've ever had!) I now know how to toast in about five different languages, since we were, uh, "practicing" multiple times almost every night. |
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Katerina and Evgenia dancing in their chairs... |
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Some of the girls back at Chambon for the real Bastille Day celebration in the town square. |
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Daniella (France) at the celebration. |
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Evgenia drinking. |
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Hana drinking. |
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Jana drinking... |
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Martin#3 and Martin#1, best friends from the Czech Republic. At the last workcamp they participated in, there was a third Martin (#2, who was not at this camp). It seems to be a popular Czech name... |
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Zuzana modeling! |
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Hana and Evgenia. |
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Pascal (France). It's not just the picture; he's usually high... |
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We went to a very small (probably less than 50 people in the audience) performance by a traveling circus family. |
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A conference with our sponsors at the town hall. |
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Zuzana is much loved! |
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An old stone quarry that has filled with water. |
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Evgenia and Katerina in Puy en Velay, the very old city about an hour away from Chambon that we visited one Saturday with the two other workcamps in the area. |
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Fanny (our French coordinator) coordinates. |
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Hana over the city of Puy en Velay. There were a lot of cool narrow, winding cobblestone streets with densely packed, ancient stone buildings that I associate so closely with the beauty of basic European architecture... |
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An old church in Le Puy. |
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A narrow street in the city. |
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Rafa and Marta, our couple from Spain, outside the internet cafe in Le Puy. |
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Me and Katerina taking a break from a hike up a statue in the center of the city. |
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Me and Martin#3 at the "beach" the group went to occasionally. |
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Katerina teaching Greek to the Spaniard. The camp was one big languages class. |
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Jana. |
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Martin#1 attempting to read my book (although I think he skipped more pages than he read). |
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Hana and Zuzana, another pair of best friends from the Czech Republic. |
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Dancing in the kitchen... |
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Martin#3 and Katerina fencing with dangerous weapons. |
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I'm really curious as to what this letter says... |
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Five hours of labor ==> a lot of food! |
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Martin#1. |
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Martin#1, doing what he always does. |
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Martin#1, doing the other thing he always does. |
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Rafa looking cool. |
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Me and Evgenia. |
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Me and Martin#1 at a small bar we went to after the circus. The Martins were very disappointed that it wasn't the Czech Republic and they couldn't buy 50 cent pints (or half-liters, or whatever it is) of beer here. |
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For our last dinner we each made a dish from our own country, and invited our sponsors and other people that had helped us. (But what's "American" food? I made Chinese fried rice.) |
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Ceska Republika! |
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The group at dinner (although we were just waiting until we could party afterwards!) |
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Martin#1 enjoying himself at our last party! |
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Dancing away... |
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Right. |
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The Martins again. |
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Finis, mais j'espere seulement a bientot! |
