Like a phoenix, a freaking slow phoenix

The last time I wrote, my house was nothing but a flattened piece of dirt amongst the banana trees. Unfortunately, it remains nothing but a flattened piece of dirt, despite how much work we’ve put in to it in the last week. It’s much cheaper (and cooler, I think) to build my house from local resources, so the plan is a bamboo house with thatch roof and a dirt floor. Sounds simple enough, no? Well, it would be, but an unexpectedly significant amount of time is required just to get all the materials to the site. If there were a Home Depot and they delivered directly to my lil’ patch o’ dirt, we could probably build the house in a week or two. But there isn’t, and they don’t.

Last Wednesday, Florentino and I went out to cut down the trees which would make up the structural integrity of the house at each of the four corners. I felt a strange combination of manly and unmanly. Manly because, well, putting an axe to lumber is damn manly. And unmanly because of how much better and faster Florentino was than I, and how quickly my, dare I say delicate, hands developed blisters. Axing is a very precise art. You have to chop at opposing angles to create a ‘v,’ forcing the central wedge out. If instead you hit the center perpendicularly, it hurts. A lot. I played baseball for many years growing up, and played it poorly for almost as many (I think I peaked in 4^th grade), so I distinctly remember the emasculating sting of less-than-solid contact. After cutting them down, it was another five days before we could borrow a mule to carry them up to the future house.

The next day, we went to collect the bamboo we had cut down a few days earlier. After cutting it into fifteen and eleven foot lengths, the dimensions of my probable house, we had to haul it up from the river to the main path where a mule would be able to carry it the rest of the way to the road. From there, we’d need to solict the services of a passing truck to carry it the rest of the way up the hill, but that’s for another day. From the river up to the main path was only about two hundred yards, but it was straight up a steep, muddy, narrow path. It's much worse than the picture below looks. The English language can be so restricting sometimes. I simply ran out of swear words. There are only four or five that give me the satisfaction and expression necessary when I slip yet again carrying a 75 pound, fifteen foot long bamboo stalk on each shoulder. The fact that Florentino could carry three didn’t make me feel any better either. But finally we got those up, and yesterday, Carlos and his mule hauled them the rest of the way to the main road.

I’d like to be able to start building the walls when I get back from Thanksgiving, but before we can do that we have to put the tree trunks in the ground and cut the bamboo length-wise, so we’ll see.

In two days, I’ll be in Cerro Punta to celebrate Thanksgiving with a bunch of other Peace Corps people. Should be fun. Wherever you are this Thanksgiving bored reader, I hope you are around loved ones.