how to build a house in a developing country...

This past week, we spent 4 more days at the Habitat site in San Mateo, contributing "sweat equity" to the homes of 6 PJM staffers who are getting housing in that community.

Michael and I both found that, the longer we were there, the more enjoyable it became - in a lot of ways, it's just been a matter of adjusting to the filipino pace of life and work.

The site consists of about 10 finished units (see left, a shot looking at the finished units) - if I had to guess, each unit is maybe 15" wide and 30" long) - and 6 units currently being built (the shot on the right is looking the opposite direction, toward the end of the lot). The units are built primarily constructed from cement hollow blocks, rebar and concrete. When the unit is given to the home-partner, it is a "shell" - the home-partners are required to arrange electrical, plumbing (including applications to the city for water), and any interior finishes. Each home-partner is selected on the basis of their assessed need, and their ability to contribute to the project - the financial commitment is approximately 150,000P ($3,800CDN?) which is amoritized over 10 years, as well as 600 hours of labour (some of which requires financial commitment as well, as it is often via hired labour).




















There are about 15 filipino labourers (all young men - see right), hired by the home-partners to work (H4H requires that each homepartner have at least 2 workers on-site every day; thus, hired labour is standard practice and volunteer labour (like Michael and I) is used to supplement their hours). Joke tells me they earn about 200P per day ($5 CDN); several of them sleep on-site, as the cost of transportation to get home would eat up a substantive part of their earnings. They keep up an unbelievable work pace! The longer we were there, the more they adjusted to our presence and we got used to their way of doing things. Needless to say, there were lots of smiles and pointing in place of actual words :)

The actual work we did included hauling sand/gravel, mixing cement (usually on the ground), moving and pouring the cement (sometimes up to the second floor), digging holes, cutting/bending/assembling re-bar, moving dirt...among other things (see below). On Tuesday, there was a delivery of some new wheelbarrows and shovels - never in my entire life have I been so excited about a wheelbarrow!!! Again, the amount of manual labour required is astounding...assembling rebar grids (see photo) requires each piece of rebar to be cut (with a hand-saw), manually bent, arranged, and hand wired together (with, what else, individually-cut pieces of wire).




An interesting dynamic on the work-site for me...we were moving sand from a pile on the road to the inside of the site, and Sylvia, a home-partner, told me that passers-by had commented on my presence, both because I was a foreigner doing volunteer work, and because I was a woman doing a man's work. Joke tells me that it would've been a difficult adjustment for the local labourers as well, to have me on-site (as one of 3-4 females, depending on the day; and 1 of 2 white people). The gender dynamics here are something I didn't expect to impact me as much as they have...it's something I haven't quite processed yet, and I'm still trying to find my identity in all of it - both as culturally relevant/appropriate, and as remaining true to myself.

A few more photos as I sign off, of the views around the Habitat worksite.