After this week, I’ve truly learnt to appreciate the people that have constructed our country from scratch, be it our forefathers or the foreign and construction workers that continue to toil in the development of our country. As my sergeant put it aptly (in mandarin) – translated: If anyone looks down on bangladeshi workers, they would be pitting themselves against me.

Now I understand why it has taken the workers this long to construct a court of some sort at the open field downstairs. Having experienced the manual labour required to construct a simple platform for a land rover to park, its hard not to comprehend, the planning, effort and beads of perspiration taken for a construction of a shelter over our heads. Although current workers don’t have to wear SBOs and rather heavy helmets to do the work we do, nor carry 50 kg bags of cement, under the sweltering heat, nothing is simple.

Therefore, the next time you should think about looking down on the foreign or construction worker, look at the shelter above your head and appreciate the effort taken. If not, then maybe you should slap yourself, look in the mirror, and try some manual construction work. Then, you would truly appreciate and like me, feel like saluting those that have toiled to construct our nation.