Depending on the size and where they are located the schools we build cost from 36,000 to 51,000 US dollars. This includes toilets, desks and blackboards and in some cases lights and fans. Two story high schools do cost considerably more. These amounts are approximately half of what the normal building cost would be, plus these schools are built using confined masonry construction which makes them far more earthquake resistant.

Because (a) we are not contractors, so we do not take a profit plus our administration costs are minimal (approx. 6%), (b) We manage to save a great deal on construction costs since the villagers themselves donate all the manual labor that we need along with their ox carts which are used to haul the bricks, sand and stones etc and (c) our masons and carpenters, although they are paid a slightly higher salary than other construction crews, are happy to work from sun up to sun down with only an hours break for lunch. This amounts to almost double the normal local working hours which other construction crews put in per day.

School construction crew works and sleeps at the building sites which are usually not close to any towns. Although it is possible to visit the school sites during daylight hours, the government does not allow foreigners to stay there after dark.

Since both names have the same derivation, I suppose you can call it whichever you choose and not be wrong. The first recording of the country’s name dates back to 1190 when it was spelt ‘Mranma’. In the early 1800s the country’s written name was ‘Myanma’ whereas Burma was the oral name in the English language. Through the years the country has been named Myanma, Bama, Burma and then recently in 1989 the government changed it to Myanmar. If you were to take a survey of which name the locals actually prefer, you would probably find that the majority of them don’t have a strong preference one way or another as to whether it’s called Burma or Myanmar. Internationally however, there has been some differences of opinion as to what the country should be called with some countries continuing to call the country Burma. Lately however, it seems that more and more foreign governments and journalists are now referring to the country as Myanmar. In the Burmese language the word ‘myan’ means ‘the swift’ and ‘ma’ is ‘ the tough’.