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WITH A TEN-INCH-LONG com-bination wrench in one hand and balancing some 60 feet in the air atop a half-completed suspension bridge in western Myanmar, Toni Ruttimann is in his element. This re-markable self-taught bridge builder, known throughout a dozen countries simply as “The Bridgebuilder,” is helping villagers erect a 105-meter-long bridge over the muddy brown Daga River.

As the sun beats down on the 47-year-old Swiss, he mops sweat from his forehead and scoots along the steel bridge’s suspension cables

on a narrow eight-foot-long board, tightening wire clip after wire clip as the bridge takes shape. At the same time, scores of villagers who have worked for the last few weeks to help build this bridge carry and bolt in place eight-foot-long sheets of check-ered steel plate that will form the bridge floor.

With every sheet that’s laid down and every cable and wire clip that’s tightened, the bridge gets nearer to completion. Soon, after the last cable is secured, residents in this remote village of Nyaung Pin Seik will no longer have to use a costly, ram- ➸

Toni Ruttimann has devotedhis life to helping others

Building Bridges, Changing Lives

BY ROBERT KIENER

OF ONE

THE

POWER

Toni and villagers after finishing a bridge in Po Oo,

Magway Division, Myanmar

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R E A D E R ’ S D I G E S T

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shackle ferry service to cross the Daga River. Children will be able to get to school safer and easier, sick villagers can reach the medical clinic quicker and farmers can now haul more produce and handicrafts to town on bikes, carts and even motor-cycles. Their lives will improve dra-matically.

“We’ve been dream-ing of this bridge for years,” says village leader U Soe as he watches Ruttimann and villagers work on the bridge. “It will change our lives.”

Changing lives by building bridges is what Toni Ruttimann has done for the last 27 years. Inspired by re-ports of the massive damage an earthquake caused in Ecuador in 1987, he pledged “to do something.” After collecting donations in his hometown of Pontresina, Switzer-land, he flew to Ecuador to see how he could help. The 19-year-old dis-covered villagers who had become cut off from the rest of the world after losing their bridge. Ekeing out the lit-tle money he had brought from Swit-zerland and with the help of a Dutch engineer, he helped villagers build his first bridge in five months. He had found his life’s work.

On a one-man journey to “serve the people throughout the world,” he

has devoted his life to building pe-destrian bridges in countries from Honduras to Cambodia to Indonesia. Since he began his unique form of humanitarian aid he and a team of devoted welders have built more than 660 pedestrian bridges from 30 meters to 264 meters long in the ser-

vice of two million peo-ple. Presently splitting his time between Myanmar and Indone-sia, he and his team will build 15 bridges in each country this year. In Myanmar alone he has built 80 bridges.

Via the internet, he also guides the con-struction of another 15 bridges in Ecuador and South America with his

Ecuadorian colleague Walter Yánez.Some of the bridges Ruttimann

builds are replacements for those that have been destroyed or deterio-rated, but most are located in places where there has never been a bridge. “We either scout locations ourselves or villagers come to us asking for a bridge,” he says.

Ruttimann has purposely kept his bridge building efforts low key. He accepts only small donations from individuals, mostly from his native Switzerland. He has formed long-lasting relationships with the steel company Tenaris, which has contrib-uted enough steel tubes to build

some 100 bridges, and the mountain cable car operators who have do-nated a staggering 230 miles of wire rope from Swiss ski resorts. Local vil-lagers must agree to supply the labor and buy the cement (from 200 to 500 bags) and sand and gravel necessary for their bridge’s foundations.

None of Ruttimann’s donors ask for any recognition in return for their materials. “They agree with me that we are doing this for the people,” Toni says. “This is about helping oth-ers.”

He rarely gives interviews and reg-ularly turns down offers for rewards or recognition. “This isn’t about awards,” he says. “Building bridges is about spreading love and working to-gether.”

Out of principle and to keep costs down, Ruttimann travels as econom-ically as possible. Instead of hiring a car, he rode a crowded bus for five hours from Yangon and then on the back of a motorcycle to the bridge site. He stays in a modest guesthouse with only one communal bathroom and a bucket of cold water for a “shower.”

Ruttimann is always on the move, scouting and building bridges, coor-dinating shipments and managing a small crew of welders and helpers. Asked where his office is, he laughs and holds up a small backpack that contains a laptop, a digital camera and a mobile telephone. His home? “Right here,” he says, reaching for an-

other bag packed with several changes of clothes, shoes and one tie.

Although his reputation has spread throughout Asia and elsewhere, it of-ten takes him some time to explain his philosophy. For example, after telling a Myanmar government offi-cial how he had been building bridges for free since he was 19 and wanted to continue in Myanmar, the minister asked, “For free? Tell me, re-ally. Why are you doing this?”

“I see the suffering of people who need a bridge and I know how we can help,” he explained. “And I was born to be a bridge builder. Lastly, I really want to do it.”

Ruttimann not only got permission to work in Myanmar, but the govern-ment offered him help with import permits for pipe and cable and premises to assemble and store ma-terials.

The last bolt has been tightened and several villagers have taken their first tentative steps across the bridge spanning the Daga River. “Look at the smiles on these villagers’ faces as they cross their new bridge,” he says. “This is a labor of love.”

Editor’s Note: Robert Kiener first wrote about Toni Ruttiman in these pages in 2007, in “Bridges of Love.”

“I see the suffering of

people who need a bridge, and

I know how we can help,”

he explained.