San Juan Bautista #5

Tom Bastian and I left this morning at 4:30 to get an early start on our new prototype home in San Juan Bautista. Getting all the tools packed in and the materials strapped on top got us leaving late. We had to stop at another community development project we have in Balcones de Palin to get the cement mixer. After wrestling with the gate to get it unlocked we found that the mixer would not just bolt up to the back of his Montero. Instead of a normal ball connection there is a ¼” steel plate with a hole drilled through it and unfortunately the hole was too far back for us to connect it to the truck with a bolt. We had a circular saw to be able to cut it but after a search among the locals we couldn’t find an extension cord so we took turns with the hack saw until it was finally cut and attached to the truck. The sun was in the sky at this point and the volcanoes stood out in the clear morning sky. The sun only shone on the upper half of the volcanoes while they were guarding small clouds that clung to their summits like little hats. It was a beautiful drive.

It ended up being about 9am once we reached San Juan and the site which was supposed to be level and cleared was neither so we started laying out the foundation and deciding which trees to take down. The site had very soft soil and papaya trees with little papayas growing at the top like coconuts. Amazingly enough the trees were easy to take down. We just pushed all of them down except one that needed to be dug out and the roots chopped. I started working on leveling the site while Tom worked creating the steel forms for the foundation. We hope to reuse these forms with all the other homes. The sun beat down on us and no matter how much effort we put out the work seemed to creep on. I had to take a break and walk down to the river to cool off. It was a raging brown rapid. It was in no way clear like water should be. It was so full of dirt which had washed away from the recent rains that it looked opaque like a river of chocolate milk. As scooped my cap in the edge of the river and poured the hatful of gritty cool water on my head it served as a very real reminder of the dangers of these washouts and the probable future homes I would need to build.

The end of the day was nearing and we just wanted to get the forms in place. I was going to make my first welds with these forms and I was a bit nervous but we found out that there was not enough current in the electricity to run our welder. The mixer was not even turned on but we stored it in the church for use on Sunday.

Sunday and Monday Heather will be doing a local VBS in San Juan. While she is doing that I hope to finish the foundation on the home.

More on that later…