Devotees and school community from Davangere offered Seva in the MAM’s House Building project taking place in the village of Dongarampura, in Raichur, where the MAM has built 250 houses.
Those participating took this service work as a God given opportunity and offered it to Amma with love. A family of five closed the hotel that they own to join the group. Several others including businessmen, engineers, employees, etc. took leave from work to be available to serve Amma’s cause. One of them gave up household responsibilities to other family members to stay in Raichur and handle the accounts and other duties. Some of the sevaites where patients with chronic ailments such as high BP and diabetes; but they daringly plunged into heavy physical work in a temperature reaching 46 degree Celsius!

In the group were five young Amrita school students, who while chanting Amma’s name loudly, loaded and carried jelly stone sand mixture in bowls and tools larger than them.
In addition to the school’s teaching staff, school drivers, attendants, ayas  and gardeners participated in the work.

The work involved the following:
Sand Filling: Since the houses are built above the ground  (in view of any future floods), the floors inside the houses needed to be filled up. Within 3 days, the floors of nearly 20 houses, where thus filled with 2 1/2 feet of mud.
Foundation Filling:  The foundation of 5 houses were erected at higher levels, so they needed to be filled up.
Moving Blocks: To build toilets and entrance steps for 35 houses, hundreds of half solid blocks of 15kgs were moved, by passing them in lines.
Site cleaning: Teams cleaned up the entire site. Iron rods, nails, binding wires, cement bags, ropes and other re-usable items lying scattered, were collected and sorted in an orderly way (The ropes were made into balls for easy re-use). Same for bags of cement and solidified cement which could be re-used for flooring and PCC work, and for  solid blocks, half solid blocks and reusable waste. All these now valuable items were given to the store.
Scattered sand and jelly stones were carried to form heaps or to fill cement bags for easy carrying to a next site.

A huge area on the backside of the site was also cleared.

And the work is not yet over! There are going to be several more villages needing similar work. Working on sites doesn’t have the specialness and warmth of Amritapuri. There is no timely supply of food and Chai. There are even no trees to sit under when the sun scorches. Helpers don’t pour in like during the tsunami rehabilitation work, for this is not Amritapuri. However the power of Amma’s invisible hands is very visible…

–Anjali