Despite a very busy 2 weeks for La Esperanza Granada with school starting this Monday, new volunteers pouring in, and another learning center set to start construction this month, staff were able to track down the final house cost ($3300) and get proposals for the remaining $1500. With much input, we decided on 3 new latrines for 3 Nueva Esperanza families. Work started yesterday and should be done by Monday. We fly to LA Tuesday. Here are some pics from today.

This latrine will serve 2 families, about 15 people, living on a good sized lot just down from the school.

This is the 2nd latrine that was just started in very hard dirt. It will serve a family of 8.

This is the first one again, with 2 families.

Despite losing my wallet today somewhere between the house and kids school, today was pretty good for house progress.  After re-tracing my path twice and cancelling my cards, I met with the LEG director and the contractor. We decided to order a gas stove tank set up and a locally made ceramic super efficient wood stove contraption: https://www.comarcasapoyo.org/coci-nica-english. We also agreed to get a bunk bed set up for the Erick Antonio and Darling.

The contractor said he had a crew available this afternoon and with the materials left over at the site he offered to do a concrete floor today for $100. He called the labor charge, about $33, “un regalo”, a gift.

In about 6 hours of work, he knocked out 7 feet. He said we should stop at 13 feet because the water table might get in if we go further. Which is BS according to Darvin. The old latrine was 18 feet deep.

The 4 man concrete crew finally showed up in a big truck around 3pm with all the supplies and tools. They worked extremely fast mixing sand, rock, water and cement in the street and carried bucket loads to the house.

The 3 inches of concrete was done in about 2 hours. Another finish layer and color will hopefully get done tomorrow.

After protesting this yesterday, I was told all agreed this was the best approach to finish this wall, which faces the neighbor they don’t seem too friendly with. More importantly, the wind comes from the other direction. These are the best peices from the old roof. The other 3 walls will be done with the crappy wood planks, which I’m told is best to let the breeze in.

The base prep was about 4 inches of “ta pu he”, the chalky dirt pulled out of the latrine pit  from the bottom 7 feet. No compaction needed, just a little raking  to get out the big chunks.

I hope it gets a clean tight finish at the top and a coat of paint. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be a priority before my time is up here.

We had 2 workers today. They were the b team for sure and didn’t know how to let Darvin and I help too much. But they made progress. The roof got up, so we got to take down most of the old house that was left inside.

 Donated drain pipe from friends in town. Darvin met me with the horse cart and we followed it up the hill on our bikes.

The zinc/tin roof panels feel like plastic, but are very strong. 2×4 rafters are 3 feet apart and this guy was walking all over up there.

The back door framed.

The old front door remnants in front of the new house.

This 50+ year old, 250lbs dude was as slow as mollases all day. He was saving up for this. I left at 3:45 after he,was in there 30 minutes and had already gone another 2 feet deep.

The finished roof and partially cleared out old house. Plastic upper wall will hopefully get replaced with wood tomorrow. 

Saturday is church day for much of the evangelical hillside barrios. So nothing happened yesterday and today the contractor’s latrine pit expert didn’t show up. So the family was there with a skilled friend making a little progress on the wood walls. I didn’t do any work, but got talk with the family about some of the options we can pursue after the basic house scope is completed.  Tomorrow should be much more productive, but we probably won’t be done with the basic stuff until Wed now. We’ll  be starting some small extras tomorrow, like drainage and maybe extending the water supply to the lavendera and shower. A few pictures from today.

Darling, Darvin and their next door neighbor cousin Jose Francisco at the new North half wall with a little wood framing started.

The new cooking area between the house and shower.

Darling in the new shower, between cooking area and latrine. The roof is supposed to extend over all of these.

The latrine, untouched since a few volunteers took some turns on Friday.

Bonus pic: breakfast view from Kathy’s Waffle House this morning.

Bonus pic: Masaya, Saturday night,1 of 3 craters in the world where public can look straight down into flowing lava. Lots of human sacrifice references from the tour guides.

Bonus pic: Fort over looking Masaya built by Samoza regime with US help. Lots of very bad things in the 2 levels of underground prison cells. The run down tourist attraction is now loosely operated by the Boy Scouts.

Today we had a big group of volunteers, 8 of us, that worked 10 -1:30.  We didn’t make it out there yesterday, so there was a tone of progress since Wed. The 4th wall got put up by the pros and a family friend, then we stuffed the top row with dirt, capped it with some concrete, the took bucket loads of the footing dirt out of the house. The old house is still pretty much intact. And thanks to us taking the large dirt pile out, they now have some room to spread out tonight.  This afternoon they were going start on the wood walls that start at the blocks you see in the pictures. No, the blocks do not have rebar for extra support. The block walls are only 4-5 ft tall, so the danger from earthquake damage is minimized by using wood up high.

We also found out today that the basic price for the house includes a free standing shower enclosure and new area for the cooking table. I hope to pick up some donated drain pipe on Monday so that we can help get the shower and sink water off their lot better. Once we do that, I hope we can keep going with more pipe to pick up the neighbors drainage too and get it a little further down the path. On Monday or Tuesday, we do the final talley  on the basic construction costs and see what more we can add. I confirmed just yesterday that the basic estimate of $3000 does not include a cement floor. I was told by several people that there maybe other priorities depending on the funding. We have about $4500 total. Our current list of upgrades for our $1500 include a floor, bunk beds for the 2 little kids, a gas  cooking stove (they burn tree limbs currently),  water supply connections to the sink and shower, a second sink/lavendera so they don’t have to wash clothes and dishes in the same place and use their 55 g drums to store water nearby, and more drainage. Hopefully we can do most of that, but there may be other things the family wants. Well ask the on Monday or Tuesday when the basic scope is done.

Today was also the last day of summer school at Nueva Esperanza. So we walked 5 minutes from the house to the school for festivities and a lot of goodbyes.

Next door cousins helping out.

Olivia filling the blocks with dirt, for extra insulation I suppose.

Attempting to get Anderson to promise me he will finish secondary school and go to university. I’m not too worried about him. I did get promises to finish secondary (high) school out of 3 other kids I’d consider at high risk of dropping out soon, but show lots of potential. I said Id check on them, so I guess we are coming back.

All the volunteers and Ayudantes.

Olivia getting charmed by the class bully, Adrian. Very serious bully.

Unbeknownst to me, construction began this past Sunday. I showed up Tuesday morning to work on the house as planned and the footings were all dug, 4 corner posts set and latrine pit was 1 meter deep.  Here are some pictures for now. They say we will be done by Monday. I’m meeting with the LEG director later this morning to understand the full scope, budget and possibilities of enhancing this house or starting a 2nd house.