The Lake Houses...

Lake Atitlán was one of the places hardest hit by Hurricane Stan. We have not been able to help the people there mainly due to the fact that as a policy we will not design or build on land that is not yours and most of the people around the lake now have land that is either unusable, unstable, or confiscated as a cemetary. Fortunately, due to its high profile, the majority of aid for the hurricane victims has been aimed at Lake Atitlán and many have found help.

I was able to aid YWAM in the construction of two homes in San Pablo on the northwest shore of the lake because they were providing the funding and I was merely providing the technology and direction in the construction. San Pablo is primarily a lakeside coffee village. The town is pretty low key and composed of nearly all adobe buildings. Many of the people own small coffee farms or they work picking the coffee. I watched the people bring their 100lb sacks of coffee to the market and receive a little more than a dollar for each sack. I watched one boy about 10 years old carrying his 100lb sack of coffee and his backpack down the street in torn clothes and without shoes.

One of our constuction projects was a block addition to an adobe home and the other was a complete new home. My involvement as primarily with the new home because it was built with electropanel, the strange material we use in our home designs. We couldn't use our design because the size of Jorge's property was smaller than the footprint of our home. His property is about 10'x16'! We customized the home to half its size and builtit there along the new road. Before, both he and his wife were living on the property with 4 sticks holding up a tin roof and corn stalks tied together with some plastic bits. They used another sheet of plastic tied like a tent to the surrounding coffee trees with a small "campfire" as the kitchen. He now has a secure home with a concrete floor that he can lock to keep both his family and his belongings safe.


Go to my Flickr account to see all the photos