Workshops, manual labour and development

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Hola, Buenos Noches.

I think I’m beginning to suffer from sleep deprivation. I don’t sleep very much at the moment, I usually sleep thorough anything but this places is very loud all the time. We have a Cockerel contained in a box (a rudimentary speaker) which leans against our wall, it goes off at three thirty and does not stop, I still have not got used to it yet. It also sits on top of the toilet and looks down on us in the morning, I think it has issues!

As mentioned in my previous entries I thought some entries would become monotonous and repetitive so I may condense down days so that you don’t have to read the same stuff all the time. You may even find weeks reflected upon. Sunday day and night I got quite a high fever so couldn’t work on Monday. I still can’t think straight now, but need to man up.

The stray dogs are rampant here so I have asked to have a meeting with our local chief and main project supervisor to see if we can try and nip the problem at its source. Large piles of rubbish collect at the end of most roads which the dogs feed off, I´m going to see if we can build bins at the end of these roads which could store the accumulating rubbish, its quite a simple idea but could hopefully stop them being able to feed, I know it moves the problem elsewhere but its more effective than rounding them up and shooting them now and again. This could also induce some civic pride into the area as rubbish would accumulate in the bins as opposed to people roads and gardens!

I was waiting for one of our workshops to start today and I saw a boy of about 14 rummaging through one of the rubbish piles, incidentally with a dog. He had a large sack over his back and was collecting all sorts of items from the rubbish piles, people really don’t throw much away here so I can’t imagine what he found. I guess he was from the new builds at the top of the hill. I could only glance and didn’t want to take a photo. It would have been good to have a photo for this but I couldn’t imagine how he would of felt if he had seen me.

I guess we are really close to the bottom rungs of the ladder here, if things were much poorer people would live on rubbish tips. Patchacutec is in effect a refugee camp that’s become permanent; I can’t imagine how bad things were when they all initially arrived. No rubbish collection, running water, electricity, health services and living room education services.
We finished the silo today and started on the foundations of the rest of the building. It involved compacting and mixing cement. Bloody ruined my hands as the compacting is manual………

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Photos

Cock fighting
might see if i can get this started back in the UK

New Chicks on the block
Dinner tomorrow no doubt!

Dead dogg
I´m begining to see them as total vermin.

The Moustach
I shaved for the coming Friday, but left a stach for the day........not cool!

Comments

[melanie]

Hi darling, those poor people, great idea to build bins... err who will empty them and would they be open at front, or with cageing as people may still want to look through but this would stop dogs.... perhaps something needs to be done about dogs......they need to be stopped from breeding and hate to say it the wild ones culled, kindly.... and if the dogs are vermin what about the actual vermin, must be crawling.... it must be living nightmare....x