Tanks for the memories

We’re getting close to done with the tanks. This morning we did the base of the next-to-last one, and as I was gluing all the PCV drainage plumbing together, I kept thinking “one more time… one more time…” I think I like the tanks (pilas) the best of all the projects we’re doing, but MAN, are they a lot of work. As part of figuring out the construction sequence, I made a SketchUp model of the tank, showing how the forms all go together and the bracing and the construction sequence. You can download it here, much like the latrine model I posted last year, to explore and play with on your own.

This week’s good news is that Diego and Ximon are at the point where they can pretty much build them without my assistance. That’s the point of the exercise, to build capacity in the local leadership. A few of the days, I just showed up at the very end to make sure everything was right before they poured concrete. There have been frustrations, though. One day I decided I would do NOTHING but watch and wait, allowing them the chance to make their own errors, and only step in when a disaster was about to occur. I think this is a very important aspect of teaching, and it’s my weakest area. It was super annoying, since I’m a get-in-and-do-it kind of guy. Another frustration happened when we didn’t properly brace a form, and the pressure of the concrete caused a blowout. Concrete went squirting out, things got out of alignment, and we had to run around like our hair was on fire disassembling forms, scraping concrete, reassembling forms, then refilling the walls before the concrete set. Ugh. But the bright side? When it happened THE SECOND TIME a few days later, Diego and Ximon knew how to take care of it. I just sat back and bit my fingernails for a tense two hours, “supervising”.

Part of the stress of this is the schedule. We can’t let up, or we won’t get our project done in time. To the guy that commented about the material distribution, yes I know, we have a LOT to do in very few days. But life wouldn’t be interesting if were easy, right? Here is where I should mention that Emily is really picking up the slack. I have been a bit scattered lately, very tired, and not completing sentences. She keeps on jumping in, making people work, taking on stuff that she is only just now learning herself. Granted, she’s pretty good at building things after all we’ve been through, but a lot of this stuff is new to her. Thankfully, she’s great at improvising, visualizing, and has a get-it-done attitude that is unstoppable. She’s the bomb.

The stress of this project is now further complicated by financing. We have had a really tight budget all along, so we could reach as many families as possible on the fixed grant we received from USAID. However, as happens in the “real world”, several things have gone awry. We took the latrine out of the grant, since we thought Rotary was going to pick that up. Due to a miscommunication on my part, they no longer want to… their funds were alotted for composting latrines, and this family wants a ventilated latrine. This is not meant as a criticism of Rotary, either: they donated a big chunk of money to put a floor in the school, and that helped a lot. I just need to find $250 somewhere for the latrine. Also, I missed a few times on some material estimates and we had some unexpected expenses come up. For example, the forms on a few of the tanks weren’t braced right, and we used too much cement. Or the stove bricks availble locally are much smaller than what we’d used during training, so we needed to order more. These types of errors happen in construction, and most professional projects have a contingency fund of 10% to cover it. We don’t, as I was trying to budget “tight”, so now we are a few thousand quetzales over. But the worst expense of all is purely a paperwork problem. We were told that we would be refunded the 10% sales tax we paid on the materials, since Peace Corps is an aid organization, and I budgeted accordingly. Last week I emailed the Peace Corps accountant to get our 10% back, and she told me that I was actually supposed to send her the receipts BEFORE i paid, she would make a form, fax it to me, I would hand it to the business, and they’d give me a discount at the time of purchase. Wow, it would have been nice to know THAT several weeks ago. Her best advice to me was to go visit the business, and ask them to hand me some cash. Riiiiiiiiight.

10% of our project, by the way, is about 6,000 quetzales. More than Emily and I make in a month, combined. I am once again holding out the hat, hopefully for the last time in our Peace Corps service. If any of you awesome blog readers are interested in financially supporting the little village of Yulais, you can comment it or email me directly.

Despite all this stress, Diego mentioned something in passing today that made me feel really good. “Can you draw out another sketch for me, with the dimensions of the horizontal steel spacing?” he asked. I’d drawn him about everything else in the last few days, so one more sketch was no biggie. He continued, “I’d like to make another tank for some of my relatives after you leave.”

Now THAT is what it’s all about.