This is the second day of the build. When I woke up this morning, things were
different – everything was in darkness.
The electricity went out during the night. I later found out that this was a pre-planned
outage for maintenance by the electric company – no electricity from 5:00 a.m.
to 3 p.m. At Paralba de Vida, they have
gas for the stoves and hot water, and the water is gravity feed. The only thing not working besides the lights
was the potable water purifier – so we just needed to not waste the drinking
water.
After breakfast, we headed off to the three houses. I did not take many pictures today, as it was
just more hard physical labor. Since
there was no electricity, there was no electrical pump to move the water up to
the houses. There is no public water
system – instead each of the three homeowners have to pay to have water trucked
in. And today, with no pump, we had to carry
buckets of water up to the build sites – for mixing the mortar and for wetting
the bricks.
Thus, the day was spent moving dirt and water, plus another
truck load of 1,000 bricks and 20 bags of cement was delivered. Today, we set up a line and handed the bricks
along to where they were stacked in the middle house. This meant they only had to be handled once,
unlike Monday when they had to be handled three times – once off the truck,
once half way up the hill to the third house and a final time up the rest of
the way into the third house. And as
steep as the hill was to the third house, a fourth house is planned above the
third – but that is not a project our team will work on.
After lunch, there was only a limited amount of moving sand
and water, and the masons working with a couple of volunteers continuing to put
up more bricks and mortar. We got to go
in groups of five to see Rosa’s house – her house is a Fuller house built
generally to Fuller plan (I took a picture of the plans Monday). Rosa works as the equipment and supply
manager for the La Florida Fuller Center.
Later in the afternoon, a uniformed man came delivering
papers. He was from the electric
company. Rosa’s electric bill for the
month was 13 PS (about $4.00) – not bad for a two bedroom home. Of course, her only electric usage is the
lights (she has compact fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs),
television and radio, and recharging her cell phone. Her stove uses gas.
Today, Zenon was back in Lima, so we gave Monica money to go
get us cold beer and take a moto-taxi (a motorcycle with a two passenger cab
attached). She was supposed to get back
at 4:30 but it was closer to 5:00.
Nonetheless, 12 Casqueña beers were gratefully consumed by our crew, the
masons, the homeowners and the Fuller staff.
Another good day. We were told
that there will be another truck load of 1,000 bricks and 20 bags of cement
will be delivered Wednesday – but we will not be there. Zenon has plans for us to play – it includes
a boat ride to the “poor man’s Galapagos Islands” off the coast of Peru, a
beach visit and other good times.
Tonight, we just need to eat, pack for tomorrow and get to bed –
breakfast will served early at 6:00 a.m. so we can leave by 6:30 (or at least
that is the plan).
On the bus ride back to camp, as we turned into the camp, we
had to wait – a farmer was leading his llama out of the camp road. The llama was carrying what appeared to be
his day’s harvest – not sure what it was, but I did get a couple of photos of
it.
We had a nice dinner again (the Palabra de Vida staff feed
us very well) and went to bed early.
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