I have a weakness for the little goats! I think they are all cute, even if they do try to eat our wood stakes that divide the land!
We've worked out a deal with a nearby family-owned store. We basically are doubling their business by buying a few sodas at breaks, in exchange for which we are storing our equipment behind their barbed wire. The whole neighborhood looks like their store/house... patchworks of wood and tarp construction, people living in 1 room with dirt floors.
The moms were mostly still at home, taking care of the children. But most of the fathers are pretty active on the site.
Now that construction is underway, a lot of people come to the property to talk about the work, and the wages. So a fair bit of time is spent in informal discussions and negotiations about the timing and salary of the teams. The guy in the white hat is now one of the masons (albañiles) leading 2 of our houses.
In the afternoon with the families, we picked up all the steel to create their foundations. In the background you can see our big pile of steel that we will bend into rebar foundations for the homes.
The norm for transportation is motorcycle or hitchhiking, but for delivery days we use a pickup... which feels pretty luxurious compared to the motorcycle!
You'll notice in all these pictures I am well outside the house where all the rebar is being picked up... because it is where I was bitten by the damn dog the first day. :)
We are still having trouble getting water to create cement to fill the foundations, but so far we have plenty of other work to do building the rebar foundations
It's still winter here, so until about 11am it is a bit chilly. I'm getting my money's worth out of my little Marmot jacket
I worked with Don Nestor (the albañil in this picture) and his team yesterday on the rebar foundations. Here he's wrapping the steel around a set of nails in the tree trunk to create a rectangular brace
We have about 14 people on the ground now and will add an additional 10 next week.
