In Canggu (Bali, Indonesia), the promised land of surfers and digital nomads, no housing is provided for those who do the building. Construction workers therefore live right on the building sites, in makeshift shelters at the foot of the villas they put up for others. A story by Stephan Thomas.
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The story
15 images
A mother sits inside a makeshift plywood shelter with kitchen supplies and hanging bags. Her family is working while she attends to housekeeping and cooking.
A worker sleeps on a wooden plank table inside an unfinished building.
A makeshift kitchen counter with a gas stove, wok, food bowls and a colander against plywood walls.
Break time: half a cabbage, shallots and a phone left playing on the plank that serves as kitchen table.
A builder in a sarong stands in the bare concrete shell that serves as both worksite and home.
A chicken perches among bamboo poles and construction debris.
Laundry dries across the courtyard of the plywood dormitory the builders raised beside the site; workers share the shade below.
A young builder stands against a bare concrete wall beside a metal bed frame and a brick.
Woman attending to a part of the edifice being built that serves as builders' home while onsite.
A child plays atop a mound of cement sand inside the concrete town house his family has been hired to build.
A traditional hat and laundry hang from scaffolding pipes in a bare concrete room.
Workers rest on the floor of a plywood shelter with graffiti on the walls.
A woman carrying temple offerings on her head walks barefoot past a newly opened beauty salon in Canggu.
A torn For Sale banner offers 60 are of land amid rubble, as Canggu builds over its last empty plots.