ESWB: Tosagua, Ecuador

We started the morning off by visiting the various homes Habitat has built in the town of Tosagua. By seeing these it is understandable why the people involved with Habitat wanted to build more of a community and not just single homes in the town. The homes exist in seperate neighborhoods and stand out from the rest of the homes, in the area, because of their quality, which could possibly create hostility from other neighbors, but also a simple building of a house does not always change the situation of a family and instead keeps them in the same rut, lacking education of both children and parents. On a lighter note the homes built demonstrated how professional a group of unskilled individuals, can make a house look. It is a really encouraging sign that a few individuals spending a few weeks in a foreign country can create a home the whole town can be proud of.

After taking our final tour of Tosagua we continued what will be a common theme throughout the rest of the trip, traveling. Although most of us are tired and have been through lots of sitting and waiting, we were all excited to again travel to the jewel in Ecuador’s crown, Quito. While leaving Portoviejo, and flying over the Manabi province, the lack of life in the countryside means alot more than originally when landing. It now is evidence of the lack of opportunities for people in this aready.

Although we saw the evidence and work Habitat has done throughout the city, traveling more and more across the country their is obviously more work to be done in Ecuador, not just solving the housing shortage. It serves as a starting point, but it is now our job to ensure the development of the country ends after a mile instead of a sprint.

-Jason Boral

Today we went to visit a children fundation called Las Manos in Tosagua. This fundation helps children who don’t have the needs to pay for school suplies or tuition. We had a little party in a fire station where we played with the children, ate some cake, gave them toys, and even got to get a ride in a fire truck with them.We also collected about 150 dollars to donate to the fundation. Some children danced for us and two of them sang. We had an amazing time and I personally just loved to help them get smiles on their faces.
-Gabriella

Day 7 - Tosagua

Today was our last day of building, and we were all pretty upset. We didn´t realize how much we loved digging, mixing concrete, and laying bricks until it was over! We have all really enjoyed the labor and it was certainly satisfying seeing the walls go up. Since Tuesday when we began building, we have finished all of the walls in a duplex, so this will house two families. Although our backs are sore and we all have scrapes and bruises, we managed to make it through the week without any major injuries.

After we finished building, Lupe, one of the women that we have loved getting to know at the site each day, invited us to her sister´s house for a fiesta. Itwas amazing to have her family welcome us into their simple house and share homemade treats with the entire group. Lupe has three children, and her sister had several more and a tiny baby, and they all loved having us there. We brought a pinata for the children to play with, and Lupe cooked us fantastic corn balls, yuca cakes, and some manjar, which is a dip that tastes like carmel and apples. Although most of us couldn´t comunicate verbally with the family, there was still a sense of comraderie and love that was shared. We got a big group picture and promised to send them all of the pictures that we took.

After visiting Lupe, the Habitat office in Tosagua gave us a thank you presentation, and we sang the Ramblin Wreck song for them. It was a great end to our last day. They also presented us all with homemade pictures frames and photos of ourselves on the worksite. It was an honor to be able to participate in this building project, and the people that we met in the process are what will make this exeprience truly unforgettable.

- Sarah Ford

Thursday August 9th, 2007

It is still unfathomable to think that people will be living in the homes that we are building in ¨Las Palmas¨, the little suberb we´re building here in Tosagua. While much of the work has been repeated over and over the past few days, in only the last 24 hours has it really hit me that a person will be actually living here, now that it looks like a home. Most of the walls have been erected and our work on this particular house is almost done, leaving me to think that soon this will have a bed, a kitchen and even people dwelling inside of it. Unfortunately my revelation came to me because there was a lot less work to dish out, and I had more time to reflect, but this brief feeling of inadequacy was replaced by the feeling of accomplishment and I could now imagine people inside the home. One dissappointing thing is not being able to see the finished project. Although plenty of other houses have been completed in the comunity, we won´t be able to see our finished project which I´ve left my fingerprints in, literally.

Another thing that helps the time pass is enjoying the abilities of our head-engineer, Raul. I personally like to refer to him as the ¨Sensai¨because of his skills in cutting a brick in any shape he desires. You can spend an hour trying to get a brick cut in half, while trying to avoid to break it, and then in comes Raul who will take his trowel and carve the brick into a swan and with only two whacks. I am amazed by Raul´s ability and even though he leaves in a country not known for its education system, he can still show up all us Americans. And if I´m ever in troble it won´t be the Ghostbusters I´m calling it will be Raul.

After three days of building, I have mixed emotions about our project.  We are creating an entirely new kind of community here in Tosagua.  As with anything new, the prospect of failure is frightening.  I fervently hope that the families that move into these homes can live a better life, and that perhaps these homes will give them the leg up they need to make a dramatic change for the better.  However, as I build I cannot help but wonder if we are creating an island, an isolated community that will be an anomaly in the history of Tosagua.

Today I worked with one of the future owners, a woman named Lupe, who was simply incredible.  Her humor, industriousness, and eagerness were infectious and made for the most enjoyable day of building yet.  Any concerns I have about the future of the build are mitigated by the presence of people like Lupe.  It is clear that Lupe never had the opportunities to make a better life, to own a home, or to get an education, but it was absolutely not for lack of initiative or cleverness.  In Tosagua there are simply no opportunities.  People  sit just outside the door to their shop all day and all night.  The shops all sell the same things (chicken eggs, t’shirts, icecream) and I would be shocked if they weren´t all supplied by the same trucks.  A visitor to Tosagua gets the impression that not much is happening, and not much has happened for a long time.  The people here stare at our group as we walk around, and frequently they are friendly and say hello, but I wonder what they really think of our endeavor. Do they really appreciate our efforts, or do they see us as sunshine children who are here to make ourselves feel better about their situation, but who don´t really change anything?

We had to fundraise thousands of dollars for this trip, and we have built a solid house that will change the lives of one lucky family. Still, I can´t help but think that while our intentions are sound, our methods are faulty.  This cannot be the final solution.  It is heartening to see all the love and kindness that is shown by everyone involved in this project, people who truly want to improve the lives of those less fortunate.

I don´t know yet how I feel about this project, but it has opened my eyes to a far more complex problem than I have experienced before.

-Brandon

Wednesday, August 8, 2007 

We woke up early this morning to sore muscles and rain outside, but still eager and ready to start working.  After eating breakfast at our hotel, we walked over to the site.  Immediately we all began working on the house.  After our progress yesterday on all the walls, everyone quickly fell into jobs continuing the wall construction.  For the first half of the day, there were three teams working on three different walls.  The others that were not specifically assigned a task were always walking around asking everyone if there was anything they could do to help.  One of the greatest things about our group is that no one is happy to sit around and watch other people work: everyone wants to do something. 

After finishing the first wall I was working on, I began mixing cement for the second half of day.  It’s more of a behind-the-scenes job, but it is definitely one of the hardest.  Brandon taught Emily, Kristie, and me how to do it and the four of us all worked together.  First we mixed cement and sand together, then added water.  The cement mix bag weighs 110 pounds and we used about twice as much sand as cement mix, so the dry pile was at least 300 pounds.  Factor in the weight of the water and the pile was definitely in excess of 500 pounds.  You can imagine then that mixing up this pile using only shovels was no easy task!  It was also one of the dirtiest jobs: the four of us were probably the dirtiest out of everyone else by the end of the day.  I had cement covering my clothes, gloves, legs, shoes, and even in my hair.  I know that tomorrow I will be incredibly sore from shoveling all of that cement for two hours straight.

Despite all of this, it is one of my favorite memories from our trip.  We were laughing and telling jokes the whole time.  We jokingly called ourselves the “Cement Mixing Team” and decided that we should create team t-shirts.  We worked together so well as a team, as did everyone else today working on different parts of the house.  I am so proud of our group and how much we have all come together in such a short amount of time.  I can look forward to tomorrow even though I’ll be totally and completely sore, because I know that our teamwork will get even stronger.

- Lindsay

I am so tired from laying bricks that I can barely brush my hair, but it feels good.  Today was a challenging day for the group.  We woke to rain, which luckily tapered off before we began our trek to the worksite.  Hardly anyone talked on the walk, and the workday was quieter than yesterday – muscles are aching, the tasks were repetitive and challenging.  The day was overcast, but it was actually a nice relief from the heat and the sun. Today we relied on the little things to keep our spirits up.  I think it had set in that we have several more days of this, and that work is not easy. However, almost immediately after starting the wall-building, Lupe was there with fried cheese snacks and a smile, reminding us exactly why we´re here trying to help out (Lupe is the future homeowner, a kindhearted single mother with 3 cute kids).  And even though the walls are slow-going (we have to collect concrete ingredients, mix it by hand, lay mortar, stack bricks, cut them to size with dull machetes or hammer, then repeat), it is so amazing to see how much we´ve done.  Walking through town, we always have kids calling out ¨hello¨and ¨hola,¨ and in the market the vendors are constantly offering us samples or just giving us fruits to take with us.  The genuine kindness of the people here and their openness to us does not cease to amaze, and it really makes me glad to be helping to make a small dent in their long list of needs here. 

Monday August 6, 2007

Today we traveled from Quito to Tosagua, the town of 20,000 people where we will be constructing the houses. After a thirty minute flight from Quito to Portoviejo, with an impressively steep and fast landing, we took two vans to Tosagua. The forty-five minute journey there was quite an eye-opener, as the poverty in Ecuador was evident along the way, from the many run-down houses to the poorly paved roads which often ended with no notice. Following our arrival at Hotel Punto de Oro, we were given lunch, then proceeded to visit the construction site. Habitat’s new method of providing housing is to not only build a shelter for families to live in, but to create supportive, safe, and sustainable communities in which all will help and respect each other. The site on which we will be working is to eventually contain 160 houses, all with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a main living room and kitchen, made of concrete. Actually being on site, walking around, seeing the houses that we will be working on, was a wonderful experience, and the group as a whole is very excited about commencing work tomorrow.

At night we were warmly welcomed by the Habitat for Humanity directors. Tosagua is known as “la corazon de Manabi”, or “the heart of Manabi”, and Oscar, the national Habitat director, emphasized the respect, love, and appreciation displayed by all those involved in and affected by this project. At the reception, we listened to the Ecuador national anthem, as well as the Tosagua anthem, and were entertained by school children performing a dance for the group. After displaying our own dancing abilities (or lack thereof!), we gathered to reflect on the day and discuss our expectations, past and present. In general, everyone was surprised upon seeing Tosagua, whether shocked at the extent of the poverty, or bewildered at how friendly, hopeful, and helpful the citizens are, in spite of their living conditions. Children waved and shouted “Hola!” as we walked by, and, once we were able to overcome the language barrier, everyone we asked was more than willing to help us, no matter what we were looking for. All in all, our first day in Tosagua has been extremely interesting, and we are looking forward to spending more time getting to know the town and the amazing people who live here.

-Stephanie Box

Today we started work on the houses. The site was large enough for 160 houses and unusually designed in that it is organized as an integrated community instead of individual homes. Several houses have already been built, which gave us an opportunity to view the finished product and approach our build in that context. The houses were solidly built and engineered to be different from the houses in the surrounding countryside. Most houses are made of sugar cane and have thatched roofs. The ones we are building are made of cement and have running water and electricity, which is an incredible improvement for the families. It will be interesting to see the impact these homes will have on the community as a whole. Will these homes serve as a unifying force to create a norm for future development? Or, will this simply be an oddity in the history of Tosagua? These homes are obviously a lot better and healthier than what the families are currently living in, and it will be interesting to see the community´s reaction to the new homes.

The most rewarding part of the day was trying to communicate with two young boys who will be living in the Habitat homes. Although I didn´t know too much Spanish to talk to them with, and they laughed a lot at my ¨mal español,¨ seeing them smile and laugh was such a nice reward to a hard day of building. They were very sweet and enjoyed playing around with us and teaching us words. Knowing that what I am doing will make such a huge difference to them and many children like them makes it all worth it.

In the middle of the afternoon, I went with Emily on the task of getting more tools from the city. The walk there was a little under a mile, and by the time we got there, we realized two important things: neither of us knew where the hardware store was, and neither spoke Spanish. Fortunately, we found a store near our hotel, but had no idea how to ask for trowels. After a lot of miming and using the few words we did know, they finally figured out that we were looking for ¨bailejos.¨ However, they didn´t have it at that particular store. One of the Tosaguans that helped us took us to another hardware store where we could finally buy the trowels. By the time we made it back to the site, however, it was almost time to stop building for the day.

I am very proud of how much we accomplished today and how well we worked together. We worked hard, and I hope by the end of the week we can make a huge impact on the community.

Today we had an amazing day at the build site! My favorite part was talking to the architect and engineer (through Gabby’s translations of course) about the construction process during lunch. They took us around and showed us how the load is transferred from the roof blocks down to the foundation. Being a recent graduate focused in structural engineering, I found it fasacinating.

Reinforced concrete is used to form the structural frame of columns and beams for the houses. They use light concrete block to form the roof, which is held up by 5″ of concrete supported with WWR. I also learned that they use the same codes and programs that we use in the US! He mentioned that they follow ACI, and use ETABS to aid in the design. Tosagua is in the Manabi province, which has significantly more seismic activity than locations more inland. The engineer was telling us that it is much more expensive to build on the coast for just this reason.

Thus far, this experience has helped me in more ways than I expected. Not only have I learned more about South American culture, but it broadened my perspective of my major and career path also. And best of all, I now know FOUR spanish words: Hola, Adios, Gracias, and Bailejos. (See Kristie’s blog for an explanation of that one!)

Oh and my low for the day has definitely been the internet access in Tosagua. Let’s just say that it has taken close to 2 hours to write this. Yeah…

but at least it only cost $1.35!