Building the septic tank
This didn’t start very well. Monday turned out to be a bank holiday (Columbus Day) but no-one had mentioned it to the volunteers so we all trooped off to work at 7am. The others got to their empty building site; I got as far as the bus station before meeting the site foreman who was waiting with his family for a bus to the beach. Obviously a day off is nice, but if we’d known we could have made it to Montezuma or Panama, both of which are just too far for a worthwhile weekend.
Tuesday was an easy morning for me, just standing on a ledge 2/3 of the way up a 3m deep septic tank pit, passing breeze blocks and concrete down to the guy at the bottom. About midday the neighbour turned up with a bottle of very rough whiskey and demanded that we all drink a fifth of the bottle each. Dehydrated and at altitude this had quite an effect so gave up trying to balance on the ledge and went back to digging out a large trench.
Wednesday felt ill most of the day due to a dodgy uncooked meal the previous night. Not much fun on a building site without a toilet. The glazier came in and taught me how to make windows. The metal frames come unconstructed and once put together you need to cut the glass to fit.
That evening we went to the local bar to watch Costa Rica play the USA in the World Cup qualifiers. Costa Rica remained 2-0 up for most of the game until a last minute surge put the score at 2 all. Lots of annoyed Costa Ricans assumed we were American and weren’t quite as friendly as usual.
Also found out that what I’d expected to happen to some volunteers was going on at the other site. Despite being here for only two weeks, one of them had decided to take 3 days off, one day to use the internet (which is open all evening), one to visit San José (which could have been done at the weekend) and one day to wash their underwear (being embarrassed to hand it to their host family…). When he was on site he spent most of it sleeping or just watching the others work. Where would we be without drama students?
Thursday I levelled the ground in the front garden for the fifth time, which finished all the work on the outside of the house. With just a bit of skilled tileing and electrical work to go they sent me home for the weekend, and we’ll hand over the keys on Monday. Which reminds me, should have put the front door in.
Arriving back home all the Christmas decorations had been put up, and there were a lot of them. The daughter arrived home from school and declared the mother crazy but as night fell the whole house is now full of flashing lights from the Christmas tree.
