{"id":1860,"date":"2009-06-07T13:24:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-07T19:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/?p=1860"},"modified":"2009-07-10T11:05:42","modified_gmt":"2009-07-10T17:05:42","slug":"stone-stairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/stone-stairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Stone Stairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"old<\/a>When we first moved into our clubhouse in the cornfield, the trip out to the latrine involved clambering down a steep, slippery, muddy hill. After a few falls, we decided this should be changed. I went to the woodpile, and got some quarter-round split logs to install as makeshift stairsteps. I embedded them in the muddy hillside, and that was a bit of an improvement. However, the log steps had a tendency to come loose if you didn’ t step on them just right, and it turned our muddy slip-and-slide into more of a minefield. Neither of which are fun when you are trying to resolve a central american toilet emergency.<\/p>\n

\"new<\/a>After Emily took a few bad falls, I decided to get serious about fixing it. I scoured the local fields for big, square-edged rocks. I mixed up xan<\/em> (adobe) mortar with mud and straw. I then spent several weeks building stone steps. They aren’t perfect and would be rejected by a code official in the US, but they are solid and easy to navigate in the dark. And, they don’t look too bad if I do say to myself. Here is the final product.<\/p>\n

Two of the local girls, Anix and Ingrid, watched me during most of the work. The last day, Anix came up with a big bowl of flowers she’d collected. The kids around here are always amusing themselves with things like that, it’s kindof cute. “What’s that?” I asked.<\/p>\n

\"flowergirls.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Hin mulna<\/em>jil<\/em>,” she replied (my work). Fair enough, that is what I told her the stairs were.<\/p>\n

I went up to get a drink of water, and came back to find them decorating my stairs, as a sort of inaugeration. Aaah, Guatemala.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we first moved into our clubhouse in the cornfield, the trip out to the latrine involved clambering down a steep, slippery, muddy hill. After a few falls, we decided this should be changed. I went to the woodpile, and got some quarter-round split logs to install as makeshift stairsteps. I embedded them in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jims-guatemala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2057,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions\/2057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}