Elvis' house

Last Monday, a bunch of people from the church in Los Higos went to work to help build a house for Elvis' family. Elvis is almost 14 years old and has been pretty involved in the church and club. Jose Quezada was able to get some building supplies donated to build a house for them, because their old one (seen in the photo above) is in bad condition.

The picture above shows Cristian shoveling concrete into the hole dug for the new foundation (doesn't their house have a great view?).

The new house is being built around and over the old one. They will build up the walls, they fill in with dirt between the old house and the new walls to the level of the old floor. Once they have the roof on the new walls (and over the top of the old house), they'll take down the old house and pour a floor around the old floor reaching out to the new walls. This way they have a place to live while the new house is being constructed and they can make use of the old floor. Plus, their land is really sloped, and this way they don't have to level a new place to build a new house.

The supplies came from a politician. Elections are coming up soon, so politicians are in a rush to help the people- giving away building supplies, working on road repairs, etc.

There are five girls from Trinity Western University living up in Los Higos right now, and they helped off and on throughout the day with the construction. You can't see it well, but here they are filling a large can with rocks to be thrown into the concrete for the foundation.

Chipo

Chipo showed up at the garden yesterday wearing this dinosaur costume. He said that Maribel bought it for him because he was crying. (I don't know if I understood that right, though). He was walking around acting as if wearing that outfit was quite normal. It was so small on him, too. Look at how his paws only come a big past his knees.

Kermes

On Sunday, Andre's church did a kermes, which is basically a fundraiser for the church. They held it on the basketball court in Los Higos, and had games for kids, dramas, and a performed dance. They sold food and raffled off two cell phones to help raise funds to pay the loan that they took out to buy a drum set for the church.

There was a pretty good turnout of people- I'm guessing around 150. I don't know, yet, how much money they made. I do know that they made almost $RD2,000 (almost $US60) just on the moro (rice and beans) that they sold. They were pretty proud of what they'd made and are hoping to do it again in the future.


Here Daury and Guelito rapped while Negrito and Randy break danced.

chicken coop church looks more churchy

The chicken coop church is now being used. I haven't gotten a picture of an actual service being held, but I do have a few pictures of what the interior looks like, now that it has been painted and moved in to. Note that the church recently bought a drumset, which they are very excited to use!

Also check out the curtains-- Maribel sewed them using the sewing machines that we use for our class. Finding that frilly tassely stuff to sew on the bottom was a long process, because no store in Jarabacoa even had twenty yards of any color, but it was worth it to make the church look Dominican.

Final Lorena stove pics

The Lorena stove is finally totally finished! It was finished a couple weeks ago, but I'm just getting around to putting up the pictures now. Once the blog of clay/sand mix on top of the base was dry, a machete (shown above) was used to dig out hole where firewood is entered and where pots sit.

Then some students that were visiting helped make the chimney using a piece of flat tin (shown here).

And now the chimney has been installed and the stove is being used (as can be seen by the soot in the picture above)! It seems to be working pretty well. Some smoke does enter into the house through the mouth of the stove when the fire is first started, but once the fire is going, the smoke mostly goes out the chimney. In the future, we're hoping to find a cheap way to make a more permanent chimney, since the tin will eventually rust.

limpieza

Last Friday we had a community clean up, which is the first activity that has been put on by the 'gran comision', let by Jose Quezada. Starting around 8 a.m., Jose and different community members, mostly kids, started picking up trash. By the time I got there with some students that were working with us, around 9:30 a.m., they had already used up all the garbage bags they had. We ended up hauling two dump trucks full of trash out.

Our next challenge will be to educate people about how to better dispose of their trash. People mostly burn their trash, but that leaves all the non-burnable things along the roads (glass bottles, soles from shoes, tin cans).

The picture above shows one of the students that was working with us, myself, and Franddi picking up trash.

more lorena stove

Yesterday, saturday, we finally made some big progress in the Lorena stove. We just have one more step left!! Now that the base is finished and filled with dirt and stone, we were ready to actually start making the stove part. Here is how the procress went, more or less:


Cristian and Ramon mixed the red clay with sand and water, kind of like mixing cement

The mix was put on the base, inside of a wooden frame we'd built. It was added layer, by layer.

With each layer, we'd mix it with our fingers, and pound it with our fists, and then pat it with our palms. In this photo Mateo is helping. At one point we had about 4 kids crowded on one side helping us.

Then we'd put a piece of plastic over the clay, and pound it with a concrete block.

We got dirty, and today I feel like I've exfoliated my hands. Eugenio is the guy in the red shirt, who volunteered to teach us how to build the stove.

The finished product, for now. When it is dry, on Monday or Tuesday, we'll finish the stove by taking the wood off, digging out the tunnel where the firewood goes, and making the holes where the pots and chimney go.