On the ground in Villamontes, and off to a great start!

Sorry for the radio silence that past week, and thanks to those of you who reached out to make sure I was doing fine.  The lack of posts has been a combo of not finding a good internet connection, but more importantly (and excitingly) we´ve made a ton of progress in the 3 days since I arrived!

For those of you who are visiting this site for the first time, the short story is that I was “stuck” for over a week in a town 12 hours away because of roadblocks and civil strikes, so just arrived to Villamontes 3  days ago. (“Stuck” being too harsh a word since the situation turned out to be a wonderful experience…but I was anxious to get started on our houses here.) So actually being in Villamontes, where my project is, is already great news.

The week started much like many weeks I’ve had in consulting… with a Sunday night red-eye! Rolando, from the Tarija team, and I took the 11 hour bus overnight and arrived in Villamontes at 4am on Monday morning.

Working on 3 hours of sleep, we met the Villamontes team Monday morning and spent the day inspecting the materials that we have gathered so far for the houses, and discussing the project. It quickly came to light that, although we have land already, that we can’t actually build on it until the mayor’s office measures and approves the land. And that he’s been promising to do so for a while.

I realized on Monday part of the value I can bring in the next few days is in asking lots of questions that are (hopefully) pushing us forward—what’s the earliest the inspector said he could come? Can we go to his office again and talk to him? Are there families who could help us get the inspectors to come to inspect our land? The result of Adolfo´s (the Habitat lead for Villamontes) and my nagging is that finally yesterday we had inspectors walk and approve the land yesterday. Which means we are all systems go to work with the families to measure their plots and break ground!

Another task the past 3 days has been getting skilled construction leads for the houses. Each house will have 2 "ayudantes", or basic workers, and will share an "albañil" or consruction lead with  another house. Cherry-picking is the name of the game: The head of construction for Villamontes, Oscar, and I spent most of yesterday visiting houses in process to determine when they will finish and whether we can snatch the best construction leads to get the new houses built quickly. This also entailed lots of small questions—when will this part of the roof be done? How sure are you that you will be free next week? You can´t actually lock in any of the albañiles in until you know the date you will start construction, which depended on the mayor´s office (It all goes back to the mayor´s office somehow...) The great news here is we have 2 confirmed albañiles for next week, plus 3 more that we are confirming in the next days. So enough to do all 10 houses that we are targeting in the first phase.

Then we actually could hold a meeting of the families, to decide which families would get prioritized in phase 1, and which hours we would spend with them in the next days measuring their specific parcels of land. Each family has to be very involved, as we need their support to do the hard work of putting stakes in the ground for the blueprint of each room for the houses (a job that takes about 3 hours per house). There was a lot of jockeying between families for the times that are least hot, with fewest mosquitos.

Finally today was spent in part in a round of radio interviews, raising awareness for Habitat and their mission, but also letting people know we hope to build 5 more homes, and potentially 10. Already we are getting lots of calls and people coming by the office to learn more.

Phew! It´s been a busy few days on the project front. On the personal front, I´m getting settled in here to a town that feels a lot like the Wild West.  The roads are about 90% dirt, the shops are little shacks on the dirt roads, and there is 1 place that serves lunch. I rarely experience culture shock, but the remoteness here has been a little bit of a surprise.

But the people have been lovely, and it´s fun starting to become more "local" as I experience many firsts here. I "subscribed" to the one lunch place, which means I get to write my name in a notebook when I have lunch there, and will pay the $1/lunch fee monthly instead of paying my 8 bolivianos daily. I also had my first negotiation with my landlord (I have a nice small apartment here), over which day/week/month I will get hot water installed. I experienced my first (and second and third) dog bite from a dog within about 4 hours of arriving (an event I hope to not repeat!). I bought my first round of groceries from one of the stores, which was the first day in Bolivia I´ve carried more than 5 dollars to cover my daily expenses. And there have been a hundred small, great moments of excitement, joy, frustration, anticipation, as I feel increasingly responsible for the success of the 10 homes we will start building, and hopefully the chance to build even more than that.

So that´s the news from here. Pictures of my first days in Villamontes are on the right, or you can click HERE. Would love to hear from you.

Saludos from (finally!) Villamontes,

naomi

Comments

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Naomi, you kick ass. I can't wait to hear more stories as the adventure unfolds :)

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