27 Months of La Pura Vida

This past month has flown by and I feel like I didn't utilize my time nearly as efficiently as I should have and there are some final touches that need to be smoothed out in the community but as I am writing this I am already in San Jose getting ready to head towards the airport to meet the president of Courts for Kids around noon and then the team around 6.  These past weeks have been the most stressful (yes even more stressful than the week before the event), the most painful, most exhausting days of my service so far here in PCCR.  There are so many little things that I would have changed if I could do it all over again but I think by making it harder for myself, I learned that much more about myself and how to handle difficult situations in a different culture and utilizing whatever language skills I have to explain my position (certainly the hardest part).  We compacted the land by hand, spread 300 meters of gravel, welded the goals, mixed cement, lugged the concrete block into place and then back again when we didn't have enough time to finish the work in the same day.  I lost my patience with community members, screamed in English at no one to relieve some stress, negotiated and played both sides in order to finished the project, met a mountain of new people, strengthened my position in the community and within a week will have a tangible community project completed.

This Weeks Work

This past week was a mix of ups and downs as per usual but I think all parties are finally on the same page and the contractor got his money so he is happy for the moment.  At this point, the only final worry is that the community won't show up to help during the week.  The food is set, the transportation check have been written, the housing is being prepped now, the cultural events are in good hands (hopefully) and then only thing left to finalize is the inauguration of the court which I think is just about done but there are some issues with the ADI investment into the party that need to be smoothed out.

First, after digging the footings and filling them in with cement, we mixed the motar and placed three sides of block on top of the footing.  Jorge did a great job of making sure all the block was level and fixing any small mistakes in the footing.  A concrete block has a depth of 20cm and our court only has a depth of 10cm of concrete so the next step was filling in 10cm of the court with dirt.  We were lucky enough to get a donation of an excavator from the government organization JAPDEVA which dumped 6 shovel fulls of dirt in the center of the court which we then had to spread with wheelbarrows and shovels (tough!).  Lucky, a backhoe from the community came near the end and did the rest of the work for us.  The next step was compacting the dirt and making sure the foundation was level.  We were promised the use of a roller to do this work since Monday and because of the amount of work that was needed to do it by hand, we decided to continue waiting, and waiting, and waiting.  Finally, Saturday night, it was clear the roller was never going to come and Sunday, with a group of 14 community members, we went at compacting the foundation by hand.  We worked with wooden planks to literally stomp on the dirt, used concrete drainage tubes as rollers  and went at it for 6 hours straight.  Between 14 people, we leveled the dirt, compacted it with the wooden tools, and then flattened it with the concrete rollers...I have never been so sweaty, exhausted and sore in my life. 

Last Wednesday, we started the welding of the goals as we managed to get a donation from a local machine shop to help Jorge with the welding.  They managed to get most of the work done and left a little for Jorge to finish up on Friday.  I said I could help so I arrived there around 9 and helped for an hour.  At 10, a group of kids wanted to go around the community to clean up trash so it could "look nice for the gringos".  I said I would help and we raked the plaza, picked up a bunch of trash and they excitedly talked about when we could do it again.  Hopefully I can keep this group interested but regardless it was cool to see a couple little kids come up to me with the idea instead of me going to look for them.  And while we were going around the community, they kept yelling at people to not throw their trash along the road which was pretty funny to see.  Then at 3, I had a meeting with the local women's group to discuss how to formulate a project and to begin planning for a new project.  Not a whole lot came out of it because they were more interested in letting me know how much they have already done rather than focus on a new project but I think i'll keep on them once the court construction is done...something new to work on.

Also, through working with new people in the community and from outside the community, I learned a lot of people have heard of the possibility of the bridge project and are really interested in learning more about it and how they can help make it a reality.  Hopefully, after a couple weeks of rest and vacation (thanks Ryan!!), I can get back on top of reaching out of Engineers without Borders and see if I can secure some donations from them.

Still no progress with the recycling center but they had the idea of selling food during one of the events during this week in order to raise money for the center.  I told them that the students would have to be the ones to plan and implement the project but I would be here if they needed any help.  Fingers crossed they can organize themselves by tomorrow!

I think that is all I have for now...this time in a week, Linea Vieja will have a new multiuse court, will have had a team of 25 gringos come into their town and be ready to move onto the next project.  I cannot wait!!

Thanks for reading!

-Conor