Success!

My bottle school project is finally finished. After three months of construction and almost 6 months of collaboration and planning, we now have a beautiful two-room schoolhouse. Hooray!



Of course, this project definitely didn’t come without some roadbumps. First of all, it’s obvious that the school is now turquoise. Here’s what it looked like a week ago:


At the last minute we decided that the color should change, partly because some of the stucco work was kind of sloppy and had to be reapplied . Ideas started flying around, and next thing you know the mayor plunked down Q700 (approx. $90) for three buckets of paint and the community slapped on a fresh coat. Unfortunately, given the stark difference between light blue and dark red, 15 gallons wasn’t enough paint and now the back side of the school looks like this:


It’s not clear why the mayor didn’t just buy more paint – there were, ahem, some obstinate conversations last Thursday that resulted in certain people just sort of throwing up their hands and saying “this isn’t my problem anymore.” Kind of disappointing, but it’s sorta fortunate that the blue/red combo doesn’t actually look too bad.

Meanwhile, the welders were throwing me for a loop. This is Rolando, holding one of those special, extra-fluffy breeds of chicken:


Rolando, who actually seems like a pretty nice guy, got a bit behind schedule. Having promised that he would have the entire project completed by the 15th of August, I figured that we’d have 6 days of leeway, just in case anything came up. Boy did they cut it close – at 11:30 pm, the night before the inauguration, my community counterpart Don Miguel called and told me – “Justin, you can sleep soundly because the welders just finished installing the doors and windows.” Of course they had to fill in the big holes they drilled and then let the concrete set overnight, so we were putting a final bit of cover-up on the next morning. I literally had to warn the visiting donors, Dave and Cheryl Watson, to beware of wet paint when the inauguration began.

But who cares? It’s all over now! The work is done and there are just good stories to tell :)

On Saturday, (and skip this part if you’re squeamish) we butchered a cow in preparation:


It was two years old, cost Q3000 (about $370) and weighed about 600 pounds. They did the whole jazz right in the middle of the field, and I thought it was funny because there were NO cows anywhere nearby, like, time to make yourselves scarce lol

Here’s the head butcher distributing the cuts of meat to the amas de casa (house mothers) – note the cat waiting patiently in the background :)


Of course, we had to skewer up a little barbeque right then and there, which was probably the freshest beef I’ve ever eaten (it was pretty tasty)


At one point the local kids wanted to take me on an adventure, so we went to a nearby waterfall (you can see it off in the distance):



It’s so beautiful around here.

Sunday morning I headed back down to the community at 9 am and the ladies had been cooking for hours – it’d be stewed beef for the inauguration.


And then, everyone started to gather, all dandied up in their nicest clothes:


I even wore a suit:


There were lots of important people – from left to right:

Zach Balle (co-founder of Hug It Forward)
Cheryl and Dave Watson (visiting funders)
Juan Manuel (the new Hug It Forward coordinator in Guatemala)
Don Armando (one of the town councilmen)
Miriam Lopez Ochoa (the mayor)
Carlos Julajuj and Doris Guzman (my direct boss and his project specialist)
(I’m not sure who the guy in the orange cap is lol)
Jose Caceres (Program Director for World Vision in my area)


There was dancing:


There was a ceremonial ribbon cutting:


Formal awards:


More little kids in costume:


Lots of speeches (can you tell I’m zoning out?)


And this girl sang, no lie, 8 of those wailing Mexican rancheras about drinking and lost love and we sat there as patiently as we could :)


All told, it was a fantastic day! Thanks to everyone out there for all your support!

Putting on the roof

Rain is no longer an issue! Last week our herrero (metalworker) finished assembling the metal rafters, which he then installed on the school. Next came the tin roofing (lamina), which is standard for building construction in Guatemala. Here’s the school from the back (note the kids chasing each other; a few hang around the jobsite constantly, either curious or playing nearby)


And here’s a completed picture from the front:


Here’s an idea of what the construction looks like from the inside – the bright light you see on the ceiling is where daylight enters the classroom through an installed sheet of translucent lamina. Pretty smaaart ☺


Yep, it’s really starting to look good.


Then I came back a few days later, and whoop – they’d already started painting! (see what I said about kids being everywhere?)



Another picture from the back


and here’s what the inside will look like


A few days afterwards, it was time to pour the floor!


First, you’ve got to mix a bunch of concrete on the ground – for this particular pile I believe the proportion was roughly 5 bags of cement to 20 buckets of gravel to 30 buckets of sand. Then the albañiles (masons) start spreading it out on the classroom floor:


It’s tough work shoveling concrete but we all helped out ☺




The process goes pretty fast though; a couple of hours and we were done!



We’re about 90% done with the school now – next week the herrero will install the windows and doors while the electrician mounts the light mixtures. Just a little more than two weeks until the inauguration!

Press coverage!

I've been incredibly fortunate to get some press on my bottle school project - here are a number of news outlets that have covered my story:

Newspapers
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
Anchorage Daily News
Ponte Al Dia (Spanish)

Blogs
Earth Times
Hug It Forward

Websites
US Embassy - Guatemala

Television
CBS - Atlanta
K13XD - Fairbanks

Radio
KUAC - Fairbanks

Other bottle school projects in the news

Here's former Peace Corps Guatemala volunteer Laura Kutner demonstrating a technique of how to construct bottle wall at the 2011 Smithsonian Folklife festival:

http://www.youtube.com/peacecorps#p/a/u/2/-XH73KoK5d8

Filling in the walls

I figure I’ll start out with the most recent progress – here’s what I left with you the last time I posted (about 2 weeks ago)


Since then, this is what the community has come up with:


The end gable is filled with bottles and has its first layer of stucco; they also started stucco’ing the lower parts of the wall. But we’ve already advanced way past this point.


The sun makes it a little difficult to make out the progress, but both the end gable and the entire back wall have their finish coats of stucco. The workers are placing bottles in the second level, and since I took that picture on Wednesday the remaining squares have probably already been filled in and have their first coats of stucco. We’re moving right along.



Some recent events…..above are some pictures from when we invited a bunch of local community leaders out to the project in hopes to dispel some of the mystery surrounding building with eco-bricks. They seemed pretty impressed, which is nice because most people look at me with incredulity when I tell them that we’re building with trash. Usually, they have to see it in order to believe it.

I’ve been getting my hands dirty, of course. Here I am up on the scaffolding, tying bottles to chicken wire:


And here’s the square that Don Miguel and I finished:


These next few pictures can give you another vantage point from which you can see progress. First, the “before”:


Then, the “after”




Gotta hand it to our head mason Frainer; he’s pretty good with stucco and a trowel.

Here’s a couple of community members pitching in with another part of the wall:


Bottom line is, things are going awesome. Here’s another “before” picture of what our school will look like from the front:


Final thing – we just confirmed today that our inauguration will be Sunday, August 21st! It’ll be a big party and some people are saying that we should slaughter a cow, but I’ll wait to see it before I believe it ☺ Regardless, there’ll be lot of different people present, including the Municipality, folks from the Peace Corps administration and some special Hug It Forward VIPs. I’m really excited - just one month to go!

Significant progress

Hey all – Bottle School progress has been going really fast, and I’m a little remiss for not sharing any photos, but it’s been so dang busy around here! Let me give you a quick visual summary of the past month:




Pretty crazy, right? This is what happens when you don’t post for a while! We’ve made awesome progress and we’re starting to look at late August for the inauguration. Currently we’re working on placing the bottles - here’s how it works.

First, cut yourself a length of chicken wire (cedazo) to match the opening between the columns and beams, weaving ¼” rebar through the edges like so:

That’s Chris Barry, head mason Frainer and community coordinator Don Miguel – see how they’ve interlaced the rebar through the holes of the chicken wire? Next, they’ll pull the chicken wire tight against the beams and columns, using the “pins” already poured into the concrete as braces:

Next, all you have to do is bend the pins back with a hammer, while someone pulls the chicken wire nice and tight. Now you have the surface onto which you’ll attach your bottles!

Attaching bottles isn’t rocket science – all you have to do is use plastic string. Watch this clip for an idea of how it works.



It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it….

Here’s our first filled square!

Now the school is really starting to take shape – pretty much the entire first floor has been filled in with bottles:

The kids are cute:

The nice thing about how light the bottles are is that it makes our bottle schools safer for earthquakes – a definite concern in this country.

Here I am with my state-of-the-art sun protection system :)

Things are going great! We have about 3 or 4 weeks of work left, and then classes can begin. I’m both excited and thankful for how smooth the whole project has gone thus far!