Mucho Mas Que Casas

The Habitat Argentina affiliate uses the by-line 'Mucho Mas Que Casas' (much more than houses), which was exhibited with the last day of our build requirements where we dug a road-side culvert. Although at one time there were culverts dug along the side of the dirt roads in Emilio's neighborhood, most of them have now collapsed or grown over, and as a result - any heavy rains end up flooding the houses on either side of the road. Just last week the previous group was unable to get to Emilio's house for two days straight because the roads were impassable.

A view of the road (after pot-holes were partially filled)

So, we dug a culvert, and used some of the dirt to fill in the large pot-holes in the road. It was on a road about 4 streets away from Emilio's house, and when we asked why we were not digging by Emilio's house, the answer was that they wanted to show the whole neighborhood  what Habitat was about, in an effort to prove to them that there were no strings attached, no-one was going to be looking for their votes, and that ordinary people (just like themselves) can create change to make their lives better.

Culvert Digging 101

Playing with dirt on a beautiful day..

 It was good, honest, work, with the added bonus of having lots of kids about to amuse us.

Messi was our site supervisor...

And he thought the cat was cute!

We were also actually able to see the results of our labor since the water immediately began to fill the culvert - and some of the work was pretty muddy.

Pretty Messy...

Pulling Weeds from a Swampy Area

The other thing that this new location brought to light was more evidence of the garbage problem. Garbage trucks do not even try to get into this neighborhood because the streets are often too muddy, so there was garbage everywhere.

A sign saying 'Do Not Dump Garbage Please'

The view of the road in the other direction...

The very afternoon that we were digging the culvert, there was a meeting with local residents where another Habitat resource talked to them about garbage, and what they can do. Perhaps the combination of seeing us dig a ditch would help to empower them... It was a great example of 'Mucho Mas Que Casas' - and I can only hope it works...

Much Mas Que Casas

Last Day At Emilio's

Today was our last build day at Emilio’s house. Since there was no official scaffolding, we could only build rows to the height that we could reach by standing on the ground under our ‘safety-first’ rule. Another team from the USA is arriving next week to continue work on Emilio’s house – so he should be able to move in fairly soon.

Everyone Busy - Just one more row...

We ended up building 6 wall segments, and Emilio was very pleased to see the house becoming a reality where there only used to be an empty piece of land.

 

Check out how smooth that mortar joint is!

 



A happy worker is a good worker

To show us what a finished house looked like – we took a short tour through the neighbourhood – you can see below the comparison between a new ‘seed’ house, and one of the older shacks in the neighbourhood.

 

A Small Seed House

 

... a shack.

To celebrate, we had an enormous BBQ, complete with beef (of course), chicken, some excellent sausages, roaster veggies, salads, breads….  One of Emilio’s relatives was the BBQ master – he is a butcher, so he knows his stuff. In accordance with Argentine tradition, we all gave a cheer when he announced that the meal was ready.

 

BBQ!

Emilio handing out certificates. We Passed !!

 

And The Walls Rise

We have had two build days at Emilio's in a row now, and can see the progress with walls inching higher and higher. Yesterday was cut short due to rain - so the spare time was spent with a tour of the neighbourhood to see a couple of the Habitat houses, as well as some free time for shopping in town.

View from the kitchen to the bedroom...

More Mortar Please...

This is a 'seed house' for Emilio, which will eventually consist of 5 rooms - kitchen, bathroom, living room, and two bedrooms. However, for now he will only build three rooms (kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom), and the remaining two rooms will be built later when he has the funds. The foundation has all the rooms laid out, but we are only building walls for the 'seed portion'.

Emilio's Old House

Emilio's New House (showing current build and rooms to grow into)

 

Work tasks continued with the building of columns, mixing of cement and mortar, and laying of bricks. We also had a delivery of more bricks, so we set up a standard 'brick line' to get the bricks from the truck to the inside of the house.

Brick Line

Just Goofin' around...



Comenticios

We had some rain today, and Emilio’s road was impassable. Instead, we went to work on another Habitat Project – related to ‘Comenticios’. I was thrilled with the idea since we would be working inside (out of the sun). It was apparently up to 34 degrees the other day! Our day was spent painting rooms and halls..

oops - missed a spot...

Lunch Break

Comenticios are another interesting situation related to housing in BA. Here is the background.

To rent a ‘formal’ apartment in BA, you need to have a guarantee. This guarantee can be in the form of land ownership (by yourself or your parents), or else a reference from a previous landlord to confirm that you have been a good tenant in a ‘formal’ apartment for a minimum of 2 years. The problem is when you or your parents do not own land (if you did, why would you want an apartment…), it is impossible to rent a ‘formal’ apartment at all, since you have not rented a ‘formal’ apartment – a classic catch-22.

So…. If you need to live in town to avoid the 2-3 hour commute by bus (each way), you turn to ‘comenticios’ – which are basically rooming houses. You and your family rent a room, and share the bathroom and kitchen with all the other families in the building.

 

View of the Boca Juniors Stadium from the apartment

Both the comenticios and formal apartments are legal, but where the apartments are regulated for price and quality, the comenticios are not. Throw in a little (or a lot) of greed, combine that with families who have no other options, and you have a very large number of people living in places that are falling apart, filthy, and prone to fires due to the poor wiring, etc… What really amazed me, though, was that the price for comenticios and formal apartments are approximately the same.

Another view - someone lives here behind that door

...and someone lives here as well.

Habitat Argentina staff said that there were a lot of unique situations in Argentina, and they had to come up with some unique solutions. This was one of them.

So… they bought a comenticio house that was empty, levelled it, and built a new structure. The new five-story house has 10 apartments in it – holding the same number of families that were in the old 2-story comenticio. Each apartment has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a kitchen, and a small patio.

The plan for these rental units are to bring qualified families in for a period of two years, then give them the ‘reference’ they require to be able to rent in a ‘formal’ apartment at approximately the same price as they were paying for the comenticio room. Essentially, offering them a way out of their catch-22.

The new house

There were a lot of ‘learning experiences’ in this initiative:
1)      The comenticio was in La Boca – which is very unique neighbourhood. More than a bit rough, and with lots of history. It is well known for the brightly coloured houses, which came from the fact that most residents worked at the Port area, and painted their homes with whatever leftover paint they found from ships. It was challenging to change the way of doing business in this very insular area.
2)      They had to bring about legislative changes to bridge the gap between the comenticio designation and the rental guarantee.
3)      They had to modify what parts of the building were done by volunteers. Apparently, bypassing the masons union is OK out in the backwoods of La Matanza, but the high-profile neighbourhood of La Boca is an entirely different matter.

Although it is still a work-in-progress, there are 4 families now in the brightly-painted rental units – on their way to getting their guarantee for ‘formal’ apartments.

 

 

The Blue Market

Argentina has had major financial crises at the rate of about 1 every 5 years, and currently they are in a state of very high inflation. Past crises have included financial collapse, mass devaluations, and banks that restricted withdrawals to periodic maximums (the sort of things that tend to bring on mass demonstrations). Not surprisingly, people have little to no faith in the banking system, and tend to spend-it-when-they-have-it.  They say this accounts for their joie-de-vivre and desire to live life for the moment.  

At one point, the Argentine peso was officially pegged at 1 peso per US dollar, but after a couple of years, this was not possible to maintain, and the official exchange rate has gradually slipped from 1 peso per USD, to 1.25 peso per USD, then 2, then 3, and on… Currently, the official rate sits at around 8 pesos per USD.

However, people that want to save for major purchases have a problem – they money they save today will be worth less tomorrow. So... they tend to save their money in USD. They make money in pesos, then buy USD. I suppose they think of it as an investment that is very likely to appreciate in value. Canadian dollars need not apply.

So… where to get USD? Well – I am sure there are lots of ways, but one relatively easy way to get USD is from tourists. In comes the ‘Blue Market’ and the money changers. Another one of those ‘not quite legal’ arrangements that are openly accepted.

There are areas in town (mostly high-traffic tourist areas) where people will buy your USD and give you pesos at much higher exchange rates – up to 11 or 12 pesos per USD. We were told they were referred to as ‘Money Trees’ because if you shake them, money would fall out. A money-changer was enlisted to help us make our pesos go further, and the experience was very interesting. No pictures in this post – I expect you can understand why.

We met in a private place, and he carried wads of pesos in a plastic bag around his lower leg (under some soccer socks – of course). The rate we got for our funds was 12.75 pesos to the dollar, as long as we had USD in denominations of 50 and above. For bills under 50, there was a 3% reduction in the rate. He spoke perfect English, and showed everyone the calculations for their exchange on his smartphone. It was all very civilized.

Being the inquisitive person that I am, I asked questions about the whole process. Apparently he is actually employed by a ‘stock broker’ organization. He makes a commission, and passes the USD back to his employer. People interested in taking advantage of this ready source of USD go to the same ‘stock broker’ and buy the dollars. When I asked if the people saved the dollars in their mattress, he replied that they were mostly in safes – at the bank, in homes, or in businesses. No bank accounts - they are not safe. This is the reason why bills in small denominations are not as desirable – they take up too much space.

When we were all done, he took his new stash of USD and placed them in the same red plastic bag around his leg, pulled up his soccer sock, and was gone. Very interesting…

House-Building Argentina Style

Every build we participate in is different. In Argentina, we have the luxury of an electric cement mixer, a steady source of water onsite, and all the tools we need. We don’t have a lot of shade, and the temperature is quite hot, but that’s OK – we all huddled under the one tree and made sure to drink lots of water.

Apparently houses under this program take a long time to complete, between 4 and 6 months, so we will not be completing this house. When we arrived, the footings had already been dug, 2 of the corner columns were complete, and the re-bar for the remaining columns was already in place. Our job was to continue working on the columns, and start building walls.

Laying blocks with a smile!

 

The columns consist of 4 long pieces of re-bar held in a rectangle shape by wire. These tubes are then set into the cement footings. When the concrete is fully dry, the re-bar is surrounded on 4 sides by wood, and then the center of the wood (containing the wire) is filled with concrete. Unfortunately we do not have much wood, and what we do have is borrowed, so the wood forms are leaky – which we fill with wet strips of concrete bags.

 

Estevan on column-fill duty

 

If anyone is keeping a cook-book, here are the mixing instructions  for the concrete to go inside the columns.

1)      6 buckets of rock

2)      2 bucket of cement

3)      4 to 6 buckets of sand

4)      Water (as needed)

We also have two separate mixing instructions for the first row of blocks (the non-lime mix), and the rest of the rows of blocks (the lime mix).

 

A Safety-Conscious member of the Mortar-Mixing Union

Other requirements:

1)      Don’t let the cement mixture get all stuck in the bottom of the mixer, because then you have to scrape it out and run the mixer with some bricks in it – to clean it out (ask me how we know that)

2)      Add the sand and water ‘pocito’ by ‘pocito’ (bit by bit), so you can monitor the wetness as you go. If it gets too wet, you will have to adjust on the fly (ask me how we know this)

3)      Concrete should look thick cake batter with walnuts in it

4)      Mortar should look like a nice fudgy brownie mix

Proud of her very first batch of mortar. Isn't it lovely!!

The 'Mix Masters'

Other tasks included preparing the floor area by levelling the ground, and then packing it down with tampers.

 

Learning how to 'Go Pound Sand...'

 

So far we have 5 rows of blocks on one wall and 1 row of bricks on a second wall. Estevan gave us a ‘two-thumbs up’ and a 10 out of 10 for our wall.

A City of Contrasts

It is so very interesting to visit a new city with Habitat, because you get to see the city and the people who live in it from a number of different perspectives. In the time that we have been here, we took a city tour, had an introduction with the local affiliate, and have completed our first work session on Emilio’s house.

To start with, I have to say that BA is a beautiful city. It reminds me a lot of Paris, although perhaps a bit more run down. Right now the jacaranda trees are in full bloom, and the purple flowers are very impressive.

Sculptures made out of old pop bottles
with jacaranda trees in the background

Citizens of Argentina are also very lucky. They have free schooling (including University), and free health-care. There are events almost every week, and lots of green spaces in which to enjoy the weather and the sunshine.

This large flower statue was donated to the city of BA
by an engineer in thanks for his state-sponsored education.

 

Where it gets a bit interesting, though, is when you start to talk about the economic situation and the fact that it is common practice to not really ‘follow the rules’. Every person employed in Argentina has to belong to a trade union, and union members have been given 30% pay increases in each of the last 5 years. However, only 51% of the people are officially ‘employed’ – the rest work ‘under the table’, so about half of the people do not get these fantastic raises. In addition, although the raises of 30% were enough to cover inflation during the first couple of years, the last couple of years have seen real incomes increase less than inflation, so no-one is getting ahead.

 

We went to Recoleta cemetery in the center of town to see the burial plots of the rich and famous (including Eva Peron), and the plots were pretty much the size of the whole house that our home-owner Emilio lives in.

 

One of the thousands of sculptures in Recoleta Cemetery

There is garbage in the streets. Not so much in the nicer areas, but noticeable in other areas. Apparently there is no formal program for recycling, but there is money to made from recycled goods. Add in a bit of corruption and you have a situation where garbage trucks divert their loads from the more prosperous neighbourhoods to the ‘Garbage Mafia’ sites instead of the dump. The garbage is picked through for electronics, glass, metal, and even cardboard… and the rest is illegally dumped. We heard that the ‘Garbage Mafia’ is more powerful than the ‘Drug Mafia’. Emilio’s lane does not even have garbage pickup, because the garbage trucks can not get down his rutted street. In town, you often see people rooting through dumpsters for anything they can sell to recyclers.

 

Garbage-Pickers at Night - note the children in the cart

There are really nice neighbourhoods next to shanty-towns. The shanty-towns are inhabited by people who work in the nice neighbourhoods, but they can not afford to live anywhere close to there, so they build illegal houses nearby on unclaimed land (under bridges, by streams, etc..). When they need more room, they just build another floor, and eventually the place looks like a bunch of lego-block houses. Some have electricity, but none have water or toilets. Emilio has undisputed title to his small plot of land but only because he was a squatter there for more than 20 years.









Lego-Block squatters houses









 

Introduction to Emilio

I apologize for the lack of posts recently. Once the build starts, we are so busy that the free time we do have is usually spent trying to cool down (it has been unseasonably hot here), or resting, or waiting for internet service to come back. We are in BA, though, we have a really good team, and we have started building on Emilio's house.

The team - That's Emilio on the right

Emilio is a 57-year-old man who drives a taxi. He lives in La Matanza, a suburb of BA that is about a 45-minute drive from downtown (where we are staying). He has 16 children!!! Most are grown up, but the two youngest live with him on the weekends.

The streets in Emilio's neighbourhood are not paved, and with the recent rains, they are very rutted. Emilio lives in a shack. There is one enclosed room which is his bedroom, and two lean-to additions that house the kitchen and bathroom.

Emilio's Kitchen - doubling as a tool storage area



Bathroom

The mason for this build is Emilio's brother - Estevan. Emilio and Esteven are both really friendly and very patient with us newbies, and Emilio loves to tell stories about his formal life as a boxer, and when he was in a coma from a stroke for months. He could hear everything that was going on around him, but could not move. He is a determined man, though, and forced himself to first move a hand, then gradually other parts of his body. Now he is perfectly mobile and able to work again.

Emilio from his glory days as a boxer



The build site

Los Dedos

The reason we chose to come to Uruguay for our pre-build time was in some part because the beaches were supposed to be better, but what tipped the scales for me was ‘Los Dedos’ (the fingers).

 

Los Dedos is a sculpture in the sand at Playa Brava. It was created by a Chilean artist as part of a summer-long competition back in 1982, although he completed the structure in only 6 days.

 

Yup - that's the thumb.

There are various interpretations of the meaning behind the hand coming out of the sand. Some day it is the emergence of life, some say it is a monument to the drowned, and some say that it represents the hand that saves people in distress in the sea. (that’s my favourite).  

 

Regardless, it is an icon of Punta del Este, and a great place to see tourists taking pictures of tourist taking pictures of tourists. We also had a great day relaxing in our beach chairs, reading books and enjoying Los Dedos.

 

 

Los Dedos... (?)