A Lot of Construction and a Weekend at the Beach:

I went to work some more on the composting latrine last week. We built three more levels of the walls of the latrine and will be giving a charla to the family about how to use it next week. But these pics are what it looks like so far.

Last Thursday we went to a small village called Santa Teresa to build improved stoves in the houses of four families, with the help of an NGO. This community was so poor, I mean the poorest I’ve seen here in El Salvador. It wasn’t so much that there houses were a confetti of wood, bamboo, sheet metal, etc., but they didn’t have latrines, the terrain was horribly dry, they didn’t really have any animals; overall their resources were very lacking. But we went to work with an NGO to build stoves in the houses and the idea of these stoves is that they are sustainable, use local resources, are sufficient and carry the smoke out of the houses instead of trapping the smoke inside the house where the family breathes it in all day. And although that seems crazy, it is very common. They cook on open fires in semi-enclosed areas, burn their trash, and basically breathe in a lot of crap.

When we arrived at the house the family didn’t have the base set-up for us yet so we worked on stabilizing the base. To build the stoves we used tierra blanca (basically dirt), sand, water, grass, cement, and the left over water of boiled corn because it is sticky and acts like glue. Anyways we mixed all that stuff together in a huge pile, basically making the equivalent of adobe. Then on the base we put a large wood frame, placed two pots on the base to act as markers for the stove top holes, and ran bamboo from one end of the frame, past each pot and then up and out to the chimney part.

In this picture is the wood frame, one of the pots, a bamboo piece that is to connect to the next pot, and a metal piece (at the right of the photo), which is where the firewood will enter the stove.
Then we started packing the adobe mix into the frame. This picture shows the frame filled with some of the adobe mix and both the pots.
When we were finished packing the frame full with adobe, we removed the pots and scraped out the holes left behind. We then started making abode blocks to stack up as the base of the chimney. To finish it off we attached the chimney and cut a hole in the roof to allow the smoke to exit. The picture shows it finished with the family members of the household, except that when the adobe dries the family is going to put a thin layer of cement on the outside of the stove to make it look nicer and smoother.



As I’m sure many of you are confused to how the stove works, here it is. Looking at the finished product of the stove, the firewood enters a hole at the right side of the stove and burns underneath the two pot holes. To cook you place your pots on those holes and the fire burns underneath. Now, the first time you burn firewood in the stove, the bamboo tunnels with also burn (since they’re wood) and create tunnels in the adobe through which the smoke will travel thru the stove and up and out the chimney. Pretty freaking cool eh? Uses natural, local resources, doesn’t cost much, isn’t that much work and is genuinely engineered.

Okay, enough of the confusingness, on to the weekend at the beach. We left Friday night for Playa Tunco in La Libertad and to say the least it was awesome. It’s just a small beach community that had about six or so hotels, some yummy comedores that serve fresh fish and really huge portions of cheap breakfast, black-sand beaches, a bunch of surfers and a good mix of locals and tourists. I didn’t think it was too touristy at all, although a lot of surfers from all over come here to surf. However, it’s not surf season so the surf was pretty lame, but of course there were still tons of people out there. But we stayed in a hostel that is associated with a hotel.

So we got some of the hotel amenities for the cheap price of a hostel. And since we were such a huge group we had the hostel all to ourselves with a nice patio with hammocks. It was a great relaxing weekend. I did a lot of walking along the beach, some exploring, eating delicious ceviche and grilled fish with garlic. The only thing that sucked was that some bastard stole my sandals. I can’t believe it. I set them down, went to the water, was away for like 10 minutes and they were gone. I thought it wasn’t such a bright idea to leave them there, but seriously who steals someone’s old nasty sandals.
Anyways, we got to stay up late chatting and playing games. One hotel had a live band so we hung there for bit. I didn’t want to leave…the beach is just so fun and calming.

Lastly, in training right now we are doing what’s called “community contacts” in which we find ways to work in the community, help out, teach something, etc. The ADESCO is currently working on a project at the community cemetery to improve the entrance and build a wall around the cemetery so we volunteered to help out, more or less just offering free labor. I thought it was going to be horrible, first because I am a woman and would be going to work with a group of Salvadoran men who could have just gawked and drooled at me all day and second because I didn’t think they would actually let us do much work. But it was completely the contrary. The mason in charge of the project let us cement bricks and everything, for the whole morning. He showed us how the project was going, taught us his method of laying the bricks, leveling them, filling them, etc. In all we build two sections of the wall. And the other workers there were really friendly. They didn’t really talk to me, more just seemed surprised I think that Kevin and I were there working and we could actually do it. It was fun!