Update on San Pablo

Remember the house we built for Jorge in San Pablo?(The Lake Houses Jan 22, 2007) Here it is finished. Jorge finished the door and window and the stucco on the outside and it looks great.

We have created a new design for a home using block. The design takes longer to build but is cheaper. Paul and I will be building the prototype this next week (may 6-8) for a widow and her children. Hopefully the construction will go well and we can build another in San Pablo and 9 more in other locations in July and August.

San Pablo is made primarily of adobe. some of which is not even made from adobe bricks but rather from corn stalks in a grid with mud on them. Many of these homes are barely standing but we still are limiting our construction for those recommended by the local church who have no home at all.

Balcones...

Finally I post on the work in Balcones. Jonathan has been with us since January and we have worked together in the refugee community of Balcones de Palin. His original task was to be the construction manager for the design and construction of a new water tank, a suspension bridge to anothe comunity, and a clinic. This has been shortened down to the design and construction of the tank and evaluation/reparation plans for the water system (welcome to Guatemalan timelines).

I feel like I have had a lot to contribute to this project in particular. Most of the eMi projects revolve around structural systems where I know the least. With this project I was able to really teach Jonathan about Hydraulics in pipes and come up with some creative ways to overcome some very difficult conditions.

We knew things were going to be tough when the people tore down the old tank without telling us and before the tank design was even finished. From the huge rock under the tank area that broke the backhoe and the neighbors slab, that was too big to remove from the site and is still sitting in the road; to the workers being accustomed to certain construction and not listening to Jonathan's advice, to undersized pipes broken all over with holes drilled in them "to let the air out". It has been quite a journey. At virtually every step there was a new obstacle. Solving one problem only seemed to uncover 5 more but God has given us the grace, patience and creativity to meet them head on and, I believe, come up with some great, creative solutions .

Jonathan has been able to grow professionally as well as personally by working and living in such a challenging environment. We have had some great times studying the word in how God relates to men and discussing how to bring these trues into daily life.

The tank is nearing completion and Jonathan will return home May 23. I consider it a privilage that I was able to work with him in the office, have so much fun having him the times he was living in our home, and approach new discoveries on site while living in Balcones.

Guatemalan Sinkhole

At the end of February a large sinkhole opened up in Zone 6 of Guatemala City. I'm sure you have heard of it, but if you haven't go here to read an article I was interviewed for concerning the details of the sinkhole. This post won't be about the details of the sinkhole but rather my involvement.

A couple weeks ago, just after the sinkhole opened, my curiosity brought me to visit the sinkhole site. You must understand that here in Guatemala you are given a lot of respect with a title and engineers are placed in a similar category as doctors. I figured that I could come to the control area and say I am an engineer from the states and I am looking for the engineer in charge of the site and then I would be able to learn what happened and see the hole for myself. There are always very interesting engineering lessons to be learned from these odd types of disasters.

The surrounding police and army quickly welcomed me and sent me from person to person working my way up the ladder of command. I was ushered in past barricades and into makeshift offices and introduced to brass from the army and city and government officials. I even had a meeting set up with the director of public works for Guatemala City to discuss how I may be of assistance.

There is a camera set on a boom stretching out into the crevice which is controlled remotely. I was able to look at the video and move the camera around zooming in on the problem areas at the bottom of the hole. I was utterly amazed at what kind of red carpet was rolled out for me simply because of my title.

The site itself was impressive, the size of the hole, the sounds of the water, the smells of the sewer. Over a week has passed since my initial meeting and yesterday I brought Jonathan to the site to see it and to check on how things were going. I was remembered and welcomed by name. Not much has changed. They still have not been able to do an assessment because there is still water falling into the hole from the storm drain collector pipes.

I just found the situation quite interesting and becomes another one of my stories labeled, "only in Guatemala..." Only in Guatemala can you show up at a disaster site as an unknown person on a motorcycle and be welcomed into the inner workings. Yesterday I was even able to enter passed all the blockades and come within a few meters of the hole to take pictures (the pic was stitched from several pics from being so close)

Chichi church...

Manuel from Tabacal as well as many of the people from Tabacal are originally from a village named Lacama in Chichicastenango. I had been there once before to preach the opening sermon to a newly united church there under the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination. This church is now more than 500 Mayan people! they have found land that they are purchasing and are meeting there without any building, just out in the sun. The CMA of Guatemala asked me to work with them in the design and construction of a new building. They anticipate that once the building is there, the attendance may swell to 1000-2000 people in the next year so the structure will remain primarily without walls so that if more people come than can fit in the building, they can still meet.

When I was asked to come and visit the church in Chichi I was unaware of what was going on, I only knew they were having a conference of some sort. I was amazed at the welcome we received. When Marco Antonio (Friend from church and on the board of CMA of Guatemala) and I came there were about 600 people there (the previous day they had about 1200-1500). They welcomed us up and we both said a few words. We then convened for lunch and get to the business of the new church. We ate in a small adobe home in places of honor with the deputy mayor of the department of Chichi.

When we left we had scheduled for me to come back the following week to survey the property. This next visit required bringing the whole family. The people of Lacama and Tabacal have wanted my family to visit Lacama so they can know them.


That next week, on Valentines Day, I returned with my family and Jonathan to help me with the survey. We met Manuel at the school and all the kids came out to greet us. The crowd just kept growing and growing. The principle of the school had prepared for our visit and brought us to each of the classrooms for us to say a word to them. The classes all either made a craft for us or sang songs for us or even made us some ceviche to eat. This all was very humbling that we would be considered like celebrities. we ate lunch at Manuel's home and then Jonathan and I set out to survey while Heather met wth the women and the kids played with the village children.

The survey went very smoothly except the battery, which had been charging in the car, now did ot work. So again I slipped into MacGuyver mode and we constructed a battery out of some extra AAA batteries we had brought for the data recorder. Once the equipment was working we were able to take the survey in less than 1.5 hours. When surveying, the most important thing to do is to have two defined points so that you can always return later, align yourself to the previous survey and then do whatever else you need. We had one defined point and took all the survey points. I decided that we needed to define a second point quickly just in case of something went wrong. We shot a second defined point and the very next point, the equipment stopped working. We had all the information we needed but thank God that we were able to get the second defined point!

see more photos

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

Trip to Palin

Randy, Jonathan, Todd and I went to Palin and then on to Balcones de Palin to introduce Todd and Jonathan to the work there and show them what Jonathan will be doing. For lunch in Palin we had the traditional dish particular to this area - Iguana. and we ate under the Ceiba tree in the central park. The base of the tree was about 12'-15' in diameter and the spread of the branches was almost 200'.

Our time in Balcones was productive and I will give a better introduction in January when Jonathan comes back to live and work there. I will be supervising Jonathan and traveling there at least once a week.

See more Palin photos here

Farewell to Randy

Randy, you were and will always be a good friend.