Week 10 – Semana Diez

December 5th, 2007 by Sophie Hermann

Certainly time is flying! All of a sudden I have loads to do and realise only 2 weeks to do it in… needless to say the word stress does not feature in this country for me, which is a great thing!
This week was definately the most varied in terms of work… I spent the first three days up at Santa Cruz at the kinder, because no workers were turning up to Chiligatoro! Quite frustrating as I would turn up at 8am, then leave at 9am for the half hour hike up the road to Santa Cruz and work there for the morning. However the hour at site was not wasted – I managed to finalise a floor plan for the house at Yamaranguila that I´m designing for the foreman, as well as sketch a couple of perspectives and facade elevations… all done seated on a muddy stoop in front of the site gate, workbook on my lap and steel ruler working away! Not ideal drawing surface, but then definately great place to work in, with the lake in front of me and the forested hills behind me, peace and quiet settling around as I work!
The Monday ride back was great, as usual I began walking, and as I heard a pickup behind me, I stuck out my hand in the usual manner. The truck stopped to pick me up, and I found myself on the back with 6 other Lenca men and women. However, shortly after, the truck veered left, instead of straight ahead. Having never gone this way, I thought perhaps this would be the scenic route back to La Esperanza? However, as the road became muddier, the truck slid from side to side, and when I looked in the direction of La Esperanza, a large wooded valley was now separating me from the town, I began wondering if this was one scenic route I didn’t need to be on… However, I figured I had about 5 daylight hours if I really was going the wrong direction, to head back to town. And with the looks the Lenca woman next to me was giving me, I was kind of getting the feeling she was wondering where I was going this far into the wops… However after 15 minutes, the truck turned around, dropped them all off in apparently the middle of nowhere, where I had the chance to ask as casually as I could in my Spanish – are you going back to La Esperanza? He gave me a reassuring smile, and sure enough, back down the road we went… it was great… for the same price I got to see more of the beautiful countryside, and the way back was much more pleasant!
On Wednesday midday just as I was about to pack up and head back to La Esperanza, the coordinator arrived with some windows to fit for the kinder. I grabbed my chance to ask him what was happening at Chiligatoro and did they not have materials hence the lack of work? He looked surprised and said he´d dropped off more materials on Monday, so said he´d give me a lift back and we´d stop along the way to give the workers a bit of a talking to! Sure enough he pulls up in front of the local corner shop, and a bunch of Lenca women are there chatting, he calls out amiably to them, and they all have a discussion, but they all seem to know him around here! He mentions that Thursday to make sure there´s workers at site because the volunteer wants to work! He then stops another woman and says the same to her (not sure if one of them is the foreman´s wife, but it´s all a bit like the bush telephone in these parts anyway).
And right on cue, Thursday morning, the foreman Senor Cruz turns up, shakes my hand and says he will be working Monday but for Thursday and Friday to work with the Lenca women. I was glad he made the effort to come and see me to tell me what was happening… The Lenca women who work at the site are part of the women´s cooperative, and who will eventually take over the management of the flower shop and cafe, and they work in the gardens right next to us (I´ve helped them hoe the fields before). So Thursday I fetched buckets of water from the lake to water their plants (radishes and flowers so far), then we walked to fetch some Tierra Negra, put them in potato sacks and brought them back to site. We then filled little black plastic seedling bags, compacting the earth, and transplanted the little flowers from the outside garden into the seedling bags, and placed them inside under cover of the greenhouse netting… it´s quite pleasant to work with the women, there´s about 8 of them, mostly from the ages of 40 – 70, and they natter away and have a good laugh. Sometimes I catch enough of what they´re saying and share a good laugh too, they find that even more amusing I think.
Friday I had a great workday with the women… I was met at the site gate by one of the women with her son, and said we´re off to get some Tierra Blanca from ¨the other side¨. All sounded suitably intriguing, and with the morning sun on our backs we set off up the field, past the bull (that´s as close as I ever want to get to bull´s horns again), up the track and onto the gravel road. Along the way as we pass each house we pick up one more woman to join us on the search for Tierra Blanca. Up the road we go, to the last house, where the woman there has discussions with the rest of them as to whether they´re meant to be getting Tierra Negra (for the flowers) or Tierra Blanca (for plastering the walls). My silent vote is for Tierra Blanca, as I want to proceed with more plastering of the flower shop and cafe. Eventually they agree that the volunteer needs Tierra Blanca, so that´s where we go. I feel like Indiana Jones on the crusade for the elusive Tierra Blanca… From the house we head across field, past stunning vegie gardens that even my dad would be proud of, then down a trail. Soon we head off the trail, bushwhacking style down a slippery slope. If at any time I felt like it was a bit hairy, I looked at my trusty leather tramping/work boots then looked at the little slip on house shoes the women had on, and thought ok I´m not complaining, if that 70 year old can do it with that two centimetre heel then I can certainly do it too! Grabbing tree vines to stop ourselves falling, we ventured through the bush, until not long later we arrived at a bit of a clearing… I could feel the excitement in the air… we must be approaching the end of the search for Tierra Blanca! Sure enough, stepping over a couple of muddy mounds, we saw the soft white rock in the ground which would become the main ingredient for the plaster. The hoe came out and they hacked at the rock, which crumbled easily. We filled each of our potato sacks with 8 big spadefulls and hoisted it over our backs. The grandmother disappeared into the bush for a second and reappeared with a piece of flax, tied one end of her sack to it, tied the other end as well, and had a type of handle going on over her tied sack. She then asked one of the women to help her put it over her head and back, and the flax handle became like a headband on her forehead, with the rest of the sack sitting across the top of her back… clearly she´d done this before! I was well impressed with her method, but decided unless I had neck muscles like an All Black front row I would have to be content with the swingthebagovertheshoulder method. Needless to say with the grandmother hot on my heels I had to swallow my huffs and puffs and dig my boots into the mud as quick as I could!
I was glad once we clambered up the bush track into the open field again, and the women slung their sacks down, sat on them, and proceeded to have a little 10 minute natter to get our breath back.
Once we arrived back to site (the whole process took about an hour and a quarter) we set about collecting lake water and mixing it with the soft white rock. We crumbled it up in our hands, and thoroughly kneaded it to get as fine a mixture as possible. We then used our hands to slap it onto the walls. This is easier than it sounds, as it is quite a watery mixture, and tends to want to just slide off the wall, however with my past two attempts at this I think I was beginning to perfect my technique! It was pleasant in the sunshine to work away like this, and there´s something calming about trying to smooth the walls with the plaster. Then, for the pure reason that in this country I am considered tall believe it or not, I was sent up the most precarious ladder I´ve ever been on to reach the high bits near the gable end of the roof! If only SiteSafe could see me now… my only calming thought was that two little Lenca women were holding the ladder at its base, and that somehow that would save me… Fortunately it held up sufficiently, and even more fortunately we ran out of Tierra Blanca to finish the higher bits… I am considering asking the foreman to rig up a temporary scaffold next time (although… hang on, I´ve seen there scaffolds before = tree branches held together with green string….)! But don´t worry Mum, I won´t be going up that dodgy ladder again!
Well that was my working mornings, the rest of the afternoons this week I split between the daycare centre and the house that my host parents are building. I offered my dubious services and went on Monday and Tuesday, filling and grouting some concrete blocks, and Tuesday taught to get a good fine finish to a cement plaster wall. I was well impressed with the level of finish they could achieve with manual tools, although I was not able to learn the trowel techniques, it was only the final sponge finish that I felt I was helping with… the only reason I reckon was that it needed only the lightest of touches on the wall, softly brushing it to get as smooth a finish as possible… a woman´s touch! I had fun, and it´s not something I could do in NZ as I wouldn´t have the experience to be on a proper site helping out.
So Wednesday through Friday I went to the IHNFA centre with the kids. They were hyper on Wednesday afternoon, and I found myself flat on my back on the floor with 4 boisterous boys on top of me at one stage! They wanted lots of swinging around and piggybacking… very tiring, but lots of fun! Fortunately they were quieter on Thursday and I spent some time trying to help Juan Carlos to walk, he´s very close to it, we reckon within the next week or two he´ll be walking! He´s 18 months old so it´s well time he was walking, but he doesn´t look it at all, he looks much younger, so the combination of perhaps not as good a nutritional diet, as well as not much effort at home to get him to walk means us volunteers are doing as much as we can to try to help him out. Helps that he has a very placid nature, beautiful big brown eyes and the longest eyelashes!!
At the end of this weekend three of us escaped to a lodge only one hour walk from our place, for a bit of R&R! It was great – lots of healthy food, sunshine, peace and quiet… a great second to last weekend. I even started building a model of the house I´m designing, but because you can´t buy cardboard here I had to beg a couple of corrugated boxes from the supermarket, so we´re going for a bit of an experimental look at the moment… will see how it works out… my previous boss would be horrified that I am not using a little 90deg square to ensure the walls are perfect! I´ll have to go by eye…
And Sunday night we arrived home and the family invited us to church with them, which was great. I haven´t been here before, so we walked at 7pm in the evening to the Catholic church, we were 15 minutes left so it was only standing room available. However we felt quite welcome, and I even understood more there than I have at a church in Grey Lynn, NZ (although admittedly that was a Samoan service I walked into, at least my Spanish is better than my Samoan). The cool bit is where they do the Peace Be With You, which in NZ is a polite handshake with the person in front and behind you and maybe two or three others who catch your eye… none of that here! The whole congregation almost rearranged itself for several minutes as people hugged, kissed, crossed the length of the church to greet others… it was quite amazing. I managed to score a few hugs from randoms too!
At 8.30pm we were home again, and ready for an early night for the week ahead… The weather here has turned sunny and warm again, work is looking up and I only have 2 weeks left of this part of my journey… the plans for the house still to complete as well as the model, and a few gifts to buy for the family and for the daycare kids… lots to do, but it´s all good! I am sure these last few days will fly, and I am savouring as much of them as I can….