This is Connie Knapp's on-line journal, containing periodic musings on my day-to-day life.
The finished product
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There's more to tell and I'll blog some more later, but here's our finished house, all but the roof. Here's our team, along with the masons and the family (and a few extra kids who we picked up along the way!)
Connie, I see the finished house is made with concrete blocks. If you were handling the bocks, I hope you were wearing gloves - on second thought,I'm sure you were otherwise your hands would never be the same. Looking forward to seeing you when you get home. Love, Dad
Pat, My Spanish improved greatly-by the end of the week I was able to have whole conversations. Nicaraguans drop the "s" at the end of the word-dias becomes dia. It took a while, but I finally caught on. My trip was definitely enriched because I could speak Spanish; I was able to have one-on-one conversations, and to introduce myself without a translator. Quite a thrill! I'll make sure that my Dad knows that you and Robert were going to stop by-if you are ever in the old neighborhood again, make sure you visit himn!
Connie, I've been looking for a house. How about helping build it? Ha Ha. Seeing how others live is humbling. We are so much about owning so much stuff. Being thankful and spending time validating others is a better way to exist.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Cynthia Maddox
We sure are. One of the teenagers commented that she didn't know how she would go back to her "old" life-that she wanted to go home and throw out all her stuff. You kind of get that way....
So we think we have nothing to worry about, and we set up the Earth Boxes with mulch covers. These boxes are great-wheeled, with a staking set that comes with its own netting. We decide that there is no problem in leaving the boxes out. Here are some photos of us putting the boxes together. Here's Anne calling the Earth Box folks for some advice. Turns out we didn't need it-we got them up and working in no time, and Anne planted the tomato plants we bought at the Teatown Plant Sale. And here's what happened. Something ate through the cover-and left the tomato plants alone! Netting and duct tape to the rescue! So far, so good. Since the boxes are on wheels, we can wheel them around the property to follow the sun. Let's hope this works and we don't wind up with a $64 tomato!
Now that I'm sleeping in my own bed, not doing "bug checks" at night (Dorritt was especially concerned about scorpions, and we did kill one) and showering in a real shower, I can remember the beauty of the country-here's a photo of a bandera flower, taken at the Hotel Raizon in Maysaya, Nicaragua, where we spent our first and last two nights. What a beautiful, complex and infuriatingly "messed up" world we live in, where folks can work really really hard and still have nothing, where a beautiful country can house so many people in poverty (Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti). We met a woman from Ecuador who now lives in Chicago and is an environmental engineer for Texaco. She was amazed and touched that Americans would come to Nicaragua to help build houses. Kind of restores your faith in all of us, doesn't it? Here's a "parting shot" taken at the airport in Managua. Emily, Alexa, Lauren and B...
Comments
I see the finished house is made with concrete blocks. If you were handling the bocks, I hope you were wearing gloves - on second thought,I'm sure you were otherwise your hands would never be the same. Looking forward to seeing you when you get home.
Love,
Dad
Yes, we were wearing gloves-our hands were a mess anyway.
We're home, I'll call you soon.
Love,
Connie
What a great adventure! Yours is the first blog I've ever logged on to---great way to share your trip. Did your Spanish improve?
Regards,
Pat (Garvin)
PS: Tell your Dad I'm really sorry Rob and I didn't stop in to say hello a couple of years ago!
My Spanish improved greatly-by the end of the week I was able to have whole conversations. Nicaraguans drop the "s" at the end of the word-dias becomes dia. It took a while, but I finally caught on.
My trip was definitely enriched because I could speak Spanish; I was able to have one-on-one conversations, and to introduce myself without a translator. Quite a thrill!
I'll make sure that my Dad knows that you and Robert were going to stop by-if you are ever in the old neighborhood again, make sure you visit himn!
I've been looking for a house. How about helping build it? Ha Ha.
Seeing how others live is humbling. We are so much about owning so much stuff. Being thankful and spending time validating others is a better way to exist.
Thanks for sharing your experience,
Cynthia Maddox
You kind of get that way....