Voluntouring - Nepal

Into the heat of a dusky evening, a Nepalese pop song blasts out an insistent beat. It takes just a moment for the row of sari-swaddled women to start swinging their hips to the music, sequins flashing and smiles glinting in the disco lights. Slowly, about 90 Australian women mill around them, taking photos, clapping and giggling. Then the chorus hits. The Nepalese women reach out and pull the strangers towards them, gesturing for them to join their dancing; soon, saris swirl next to cargo pants and jewelled sandals stamp alongside sneakers.

It's the first night of Habitat for Humanity Australia's week-long home building project in Nepal, and everyone's getting acquainted. This isn't usually the way you'd find me spending my annual leave, but for this break I've decided I've had enough of lazy days lying on beaches and drinking cocktails. It is, I've decided, time to be a little selfless. So I'm here, along with nearly 100 women from Australia (and a few from New Zealand and Hong Kong), to build 10 houses for 10 women in a village in the south of this Himalaya-hugging country. Tonight, we're bonding over hand sanitiser (is gel better than wipes?), saag paneer (the local staple spinach and cheese dish) and how to negotiate squat toilets – in pants.

Earlier that day, I accompanied the Habitat team to a village on the outskirts of Itahari, a rapidly growing town in the south-east of Nepal. Shy women came to greet us, each with a different story, but the same heartbreak. Widowed or abandoned, their smiles don't speak of their troubles, but the mud houses, with leaky roofs and dirt floors, say it all. Their vulnerable position is one of the reasons they've been selected to participate in the Habitat project as "home partners".

Already on the back foot for being born female in a patriarchal country, as widows or abandoned wives they've been stripped of any status. While being burnt alive with their dead husbands on funeral pyres was outlawed in 1920, superstition and prejudice against widows persists.

The next morning, the whole village turns out to greet our group. Withered grandmothers and giggling children loop garlands of marigolds over my head and pink paint is smeared in the middle of my forehead as I wander through the village with the other Australian women. I admire a plump baby, his eyes outlined with kohl, wave at the children and watch as a goat gives birth on the side of the road. It is surreal.

There's not much time for analysis; we have a house to build. The motley group of women that I'm stationed with for the first half of the build, Team Eight, is directed down a dirt track to the frame of a home. In the front yard stands a small, straw-thatched mud hut. This, we're told, is where our home partner Sajani lives with her two sons. Behind itis the frame of a bamboo house that is to replace it. Standing proudly on a solid concrete block, its framework sits waiting to be filled in; woven, rendered, and painted. By us. As we discuss the day's schedule, it's clear some volunteers are bringing real building experience to the mix and others (like me) have only ever built an IKEA flat-pack. We sort, measurecarry, saw, split and weave the bamboo lengths as Jalil, the local mason supervising our work, looks on in amusement, stepping in when needed. Nothing could have prepared me for just how hard this job is. I sleep soundly that night.

We establish a morning routine as we board the bus each day at 7.30am, swatting away mosquitoes and swapping stories. Along the bumpy road from where we're staying to the village, we pass Nepalese life in motion: women balancing shopping baskets on their heads, butchers with live goats who stand next to blood-soaked gutters, gardens full of dahlias. One morning, we see a pig patiently waiting next to a chopping block. That afternoon, as we head back, all that's left is a slab of meat.

As the days wear on, the house starts taking shape. And while we build, village life goes on around us. It's a world filled with alien sights, smells and customs.

I wonder what Imli, a 25-year-old widowed mother of two, is thinking of us when we hand over House Seven – which I spent the second half of the week helping to build – to her on the final day. Her father, who has been wearing little more than a loincloth while working tirelessly with us, turns up in his best clothes. He's the one who took Imli under his roof when her husband died, and gave her the land on which her new house now stands. As he blinks away tears, it's clear when it comes to love and family, this community isn't so alien after all.