San Ramon House starting to take shape
The first four days of working were absolute agony. Having no particular building skills I was given all the manual labour jobs.
Over the first three days I:
- Smashed up three entire septic tanks using just a small lump hammer. This got me the nickname ‘El Torro’ for smashing things up like a bull in a china shop as I over enthusiastically reduced the walls to pebbles rather than large lumps that could easily be carried away by hand.
- Took up a number of the old 8 inch thick concrete floors with a pickaxe and no skill (or goggles – Health & Safety doesn’t exist here)
- Sieved a huge pile of rubble to separate rocks and sand for flooring and concrete
- Dug all the water pipe ditches
- Made a work bench out of old planks – was quite chuffed with that..
- Learnt how to swear like a builder in Spanish
- Learnt all the words to the Imperial beer songs they sing all day
Still haven’t perfected shouting oy-oy at every car that goes past, and I haven’t started wolf whistling yet…
On Tuesday evening one of the two girls volunteering in the local Orphanage knocked on the door, having chatted to Veronica – the daughter of my host family – at the internet cafe earlier. We picked up the other girl and headed for a drink in the nearest bar. The orphanage project seemed to have no resources and they were pretty much left to their own devices. I think we all agreed we were happy we weren’t on each other’s projects and decided to head into the country together for the weekend.
