The Usual

So my project is continuing well and I cannot complain about life.  I have gotten into a good rhythm for the week.  Wake up at 5:45 to 6:00am to either my alarm or the trucks and dirt bikes passing by my window.  Eat a wonderful breakfast prepared by Doña Isabel, my house mom.  Pack my bag  and head for the bus at 7:00am.  It´s a short 20 minute bus ride into the countryside to the bus stop shown below.  Up that dirt road lives what I would estimate to be 10 families and my project site.  Throughout the day people pass by and say hello on their way to the bus stop, very friendly people I must say.

This bus stop recently had a makeover which is why there is such clear marketing for the cafe.  It use to be falling apart with a bench that on one side rested solely on a single bolt head. 

The past two weeks the intensity of the work has picked up quite a bit.  It was always hard work but it has shifted to only sifting dirt and rocks, shoveling dirt and rocks, or pounding on concrete which gets tiresome.

This doorway had to be readjusted for later work when fitting the door.  This meant I needed to hammer and chisel between 1 to 2 inches off the entire length of the wall which was about 2 inches thick.  It took awhile to knock all the cement off but I did get it rather square for using a hammer on cement.  Additionally that same day I hammered two more holes through the cement walls for plumbing purposes and chiseled a channel in a wall for electrical cables to run from the roof down close to the floor.  I chipped away quite a bit of cement this day and all the while was wishing they used power tools, wood, or both. 

Experienced my first rain storm recently and it was pretty intense.  Full on thunderstorm.  The rain droplets began very slowly and dropped so sparsely I could stand and not be hit by them and yet they were very large drops and fell heavy into the dirt.  Then it really picked up and got incredibly loud as they hit the aluminum roof.  This all started around 11am or so.  Then the thunder and lightening kicked in and we called for lunch.  While eating lunch I recall 1 instance where the lightening and thunder occurred within a second of each other.  The rain kept falling and the thunder and lightening continued in the distance until 1pm. 

The house is coming along though with me doing more of the interior work.  The roof is complete and the front porch pillars are built and ready to be coated with more cement.  I cut out the mixer on this shot, makes the house look more appealing and farther in progress.

So one of my favorite things about the family I am working with is the number of pets and animals they have.  Currently there are 6 dogs, 1 cat, 2 box turtles, 1 parakeet, 2 full grown geese, 2 baby geese, and maybe 2 dozen chickens.  I have played with all but 1 dog, it is referred to as ´scrappy´and looks the part.  I will get that dog, I will get that dog.  I have seen some funny animal anomalies and this below is another for the list.

Yes that is a chicken with 4 legs.  This baby chick has 2 dwarf legs that are growing at a much slower pace behind its two strong legs.  If only they could breed chickens with 4 healthy legs, or maybe they already do?

Well I am exhausted from another day of work and my bed is calling me so I will be heading back now.  I´ll try to get more posted within the week.  I do miss my family and friends, I hope all is well with you at home.  Take care, adios.

Project Recap

My initial reason for coming to Costa Rica was to do a short volunteer project so it only makes sense to post some pictures about what I have been doing over the past month.  As I mentioned earlier it is a smaller group project.  I had been working with 3 other volunteers for a time but currently it is just me working with a family.  It is a family project that I am involved with.  The foreman is building the house for his newly engaged daughter and has his son and brother working with him.  They all live on the same road out in the countryside with the father up the road from the construction site and the uncle just down the road.  Both the father, Rafa, and the uncle, Tio, speak zero English so it makes for very fun and interesting communication.  Jovani, the son, can speak some basic English which helps me figure out what I need to be doing.  By the way Tio is Spanish for uncle, nobody uses his name, I have heard it once and didn´t even try to pronounce.    

This is the beginning of the project, a quick shot of the site.  Laying out and pouring the foundation for the walls to be built.  It is set off in the hillside, surrounded by trees, coffee plants, and a small river down the hill.

The walls came in as pre made slabs of concrete so they went up quickly with some bracing.  They were bonded in between with a strip of a plastic mesh and a type of plaster/cement mixture. 

That is me in the hat laying brick for the sewage tank with Rafa.  Fun stuff, throwing cement with a trowel on blocks.  It got messy and frustrating when the cement would slide off the trowel or I would miss the edge of a block with the cement.  Also did a lot of cement mixing and shoveling while building this container.

The sewage tank complete, hooray.  It took two days but nice to be done with it.  Had to stack bricks on the inside to climb out.  Then finish the left most wall from the outside.

Another quick shot of the walls and the rebar that will be secured with concrete and used to attach the roof.  We painted a blue adhesive on the walls to help bond the following layer of cement to the walls.

Lots of shoveling, digging, sifting, and any other generic labor.  I have on multiple occasions shoveled and sifted dirt for entire work days.

Just a small beetle I found while digging.  Small but built like a tank.  Had a horn on the front of its head and barbs on its legs that made it nearly impossible to hold it.  Not that the barbs were sharp but they would grip into my hands and the beetle would just push ahead.

I am well above average height in Costa Rica, I have gotten plenty of stares to confirm this.  It just so happens to help in the construction process. Here we are pouring concrete into the framing which will secure the roof and my job was to pass the 1/4 filled buckets of concrete up to the guys.  My nickname on the site became "escalera" or ladder in Spanish because of this.

Just a simple overview shot of the house progress and the surrounding area.  The cement mixer is 1 of only a few electric tools available.  Nearly everything is manual, we additionaly mixed a lot of cement by hand if the mixer had concrete in it.

Two fellow volunteers coating the walls with cement.  This is the initial stage to finishing the walls.  Take a bit of cement on a trowel and fling it against the wall.  It can get messy, especially if you´re walking through a doorway right when someone is throwing cement and you catch the splatter in the face.  Happened to all of us.  It took us a week to cover all the walls in the house.  Granted none of us are experienced in this task but it is time consuming.  On the left is Dan, a British guy who lives in Vancouver, Canada and Layne, a California girl going to school in Maryland.  They both were fun and interesting people and I felt very fortunate to work with them.

"The hole".  I had to create a 4 inch diameter hole through roughly 16 inches of solid concrete with a hammer, chisel, and pick.  Was a good workout to say the least.

Another progress photo, the uncle, Tio is on the left and the son Jovani is on the right.  They do more of the tasks that require experience and deal with materials that are in limited supply.

They welded the beams together for the roof structure then asked us to climb up and clean them.  That is me cleaning a bead, by the way there are no building codes or OSHA guidelines as far as I can tell.  Looking at these welds made me think twice about putting my weight on them.  It´s just how they do, they build it like they know and call it good because it works for them.  "Itsokay" and "ship it" come to mind.

Roof work on the house is coming along, and no harnesses or safety apparatus to be seen on the site.

Break time!  We took a ten minute break and all had a beer.  Yes, we drink beer during our breaks and even the guys on the roof had a beer.  Jovani the son top left, Rafa the father top right. Below, Tio on the left and then two other volunteers that I worked with for 2 weeks. Jaime a fellow Washingtonian from Seattle on the left and Dan again on the right.  I found it odd that 3 guys all from the Northwest were here working but it was easy to relate.

So that is a 1 post recap of about a month of work. It has been incredibly fun and rewarding.  Working side by side with the family and fellow volunteers has been very fun, even comical at times what with language barrier.  Still working on that Spanish, but still not very good.  Take care everyone, buenas noches.