To build with your hands, you must first use your feet

Edited on April 18. Pictures added at the bottom that illustrate the adobe block making process.

Wednesday, April 9 was the latest visit to San Felipe, the small village in the desert where I am documenting traditional and non-traditional building methods as well as participating in the construction of a prototype house that makes use of traditional materials and methods.

The current progress of the prototype house

This visit included members of a class I am in with Pedro entitled Materiales y sistemas alternativos en construccion.

We arrived and we took a tour of most of the village with some of the residents, which was a good review for me as each time I hear things presented in the village, I understand more as I am able to comprehend a little more Spanish each time I go. Somehow I even saw a building I have somehow never noticed before. It turns out it is the church, but it is not Catholic, therefore it is not used much, from what I understood. Many of the houses have Catholic paraphernalia (is that the right word?) in several forms including portraits, beads, and even a poster of the former pope. One brand new thing in the village that we came across is a new resident. A U.S. American woman is moving into San Felipe as she has married a man from the village. Currently the woman is living in a tent and has her supplies set up around the tent.

The homestead of the newest resident

I did not get a chance to talk with her this time, but I will on the next visit. I can't wait to hear what she has to say about leaving her old life to live here and what their future building plans will be.

After the tour we headed to the prototype house. I have not had a chance to do any work with the prototype house as work just recently resumed, so I was anxious to do something, as Pedro had told me we would be doing some work. It turns out that the plan was to make some adobe blocks. I became very excited.

First I must explain the preconceptions I had about the adobe block making process. From discussions I had overheard, I knew that to make one row of the prototype house that six wheelbarrow fulls of soil were needed. I also knew that there was a master mason being paid to make the blocks and he hired some additional helpers. I had also witnessed all the modern technology that is being introduced into specific projects in the village, such as water collection tanks, a solar panel to power a water pump, and advanced agricultural methods. I envisioned some sort of a mixing bin to combine the soil and water and then some sort of a press to make the blocks. I was wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Damasio, one of the head men of the ejido, was the local expert to show us the adobe making process. He is also the man constructing the "competing" prototype house that will use concrete for the main structure and roof because he believes it is the correct method for future construction. Damasio filled and his son, Salvador (who graciously gave me his bed the last time I stayed the night in San Felipe) filled up a wheelbarrow of the topsoil and indicated we would be making about 4 or 5 blocks. After he filled up the wheelbarrow, he proceeded to dump the dirt onto the ground. Suddenly a bucket of manure appeared and was dumped onto the dirt pile. I immediately identified the poo as coming from a horse since I grew up in a part of the country where some people use horses and buggies to get around and leave the evidence on the road and in parking lots. At this point Pedro said we would take over the work. Pedro looked at us, the students, and said that we were no different than the residents that live here and that we are going to make the blocks the real way, and started taking off his shoes and socks. It was apparent we were going to be using our bare feet to mix the dirt, water, and horse manure. At this point I chimed in and asked Pedro, "is this really how they make all these blocks, with their feet?" To which Pedro gave an emphatic "of course." Now, I'm not opposed to troucing around in dirt, I recall going to my cousin's farm many times as a kid and walking barefoot in cow manure (quite warm when it's fresh). However, I was caught off-guard by how labor intensive this process was. It immediatly became clear why so many people in the rural areas are using concrete block to build their houses. Just as I often talk myself into paying using my car to get around instead of riding my bike for free or even order Jimmy John's after a stressful day instead of cooking my already-purchased food I can see why people would pay more to haul in concrete blocks instead of stomping dirt and water to make their walls. (Horrible comparisons for examples, but it's all I could think of at the moment. I hope the point is made.)

So after this initial mild shock of reality, I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pant legs, and joined the mud mashing party. All but one of the students joined in the work--earlier she had a cactus spike go through her shoe and puncture her foot, so it was excusable. While we were stepping here and there, trying not to slip and fall, Pedro would say "make sure you smash in all the brown clumps so they get mixed up." The brown clumps were the horse manure, so he was really saying "make sure you step on every single piece of horse shit you can find."

Soon the mixture was good and the time arrived to place the mud mixture into the wooden frames. The wooden frame was a simple 40cm x 20 cm x 10 cm rectangle made from 2x4 (inches this time) pieces. The frame was placed on the ground, the inside edges primed with water, and the mixture placed inside. Soon our hands and feet were covered with the mixture, which was cool until it started drying and the flies started swarming and you remembered what the mixture was made of and why the flies liked it so much.

In all, we constructed 5 blocks.

The five blocks we made

We then rinsed off our feet and hands with the water. The water comes from a pond near the village. The pond water is not suitable for human drinking or cooking, so it is ok to use for this instance. The pond is used for animal water and has some contaminants that make humans sick. Before rainwater was harvested, the residents would drink some of their water from this. This water is very dirty, so in addition to the contaminants, health was not good during this time period. While we were rinsing off a chameleon came to watch us. Either he wasn't very good at chameleoning or he just wanted to make his presence known. Either way, it was cool.

It was good to briefly see the process behind adobe blocks. It added a new level to understanding the tradition within the community I have visited several times. I am returning in just over a week to spend the whole day working, which may involve more adobe making or the actual placing of the blocks, or something I don't even know of yet.

The spot where we stomp-mixed the mud with the other students and Pedro in the background

The water barrels

And if you're wandering, the fibers used in adobe blocks are not added in. They come from the horse manure. That was another big surprise to me. I felt like a dumb city kid several times on this visit.

Mixing the adobe mixture with out feet

Reforming the pile

Forming the first block

I help to make a block with the form

Making the surface smooth before removing the form

Small talk

Edit: Updated April 11. I forgot to include some things.

This post is to briefly describe what my everyday life has been like to those of you wondering. First is that at the beginning of March I moved. I started out living with a host family and it started out well. They are very nice people and very helpful. But after two months some things began to real wear on me. First of all there were 10 other people living in the house. Schedules interfere, some people are louder than others, and some people spend a lot of time using shared spaces. It was also a good distance from campus, as in 20 minutes one way on the bus, at a minimum. So I emailed my the international programs office here and told them how I felt and that my living situation was my least favorite part about being in Mexico. By doing this I unintentionally turned in my host family. It is a rule of the school that host families cannot rent out rooms to non-TEC students: there were 5 other renters who were not students at TEC. This was the second time the family had been caught. At the same time I emailed the school, I told my host mother how I was not really happy with the living arrangement. She realized that she had been caught again and began to cry, but realized that it was not my fault since I was not intentionally trying to get them in trouble. So by then I felt it was best to just move. And it was a great decision. I know live one block from campus, I get to make my own food, and I pay sooooo much less each month.

An interesting thing to note about my new living situation is that I am technically living unlegally in Mexico. I have not signed a new contract, so I just pay my roommate (Markus from Sweden) the rent and bills. Also, I am officially registered as living at my former host family's home with the government of Mexico. But the registration process takes too much time for me to want to attempt it again. I came to Mexico to learn about squatting, non-legal land occupation, and migration, and I now I am living illegally; though out of unwillingness to put up with red tape and not out of necessity.

I also recently got to drive in Mexico! While visiting casa Rosinda in the neighborhood where the 10x10 project is taking place to drop off some supplies, Roberto asks me, as we climb into the truck, "tu quieres manejar?" (do you want to drive). Sure that I misheard him, I said, "Did you really just ask me if I wanted to drive, because that would be cool." So we switched places and I drove down the rocky path of the mountain, avoiding all the big bumps and keeping a steady foot on the brake so as not to lose control of the truck and crash into someone's house. Residents of this neighborhood who drive must have to have their brakes replaced at least once every 3 months! After leaving the neighborhood I also drove on the regular roads and got to do a u-turn. After 3 months of not driving, I almost hit another car almost once. It was fun and I'm glad I got to experience what it is like to drive up in the neighborhood where the site is.

Other than that there is not much to tell. One of my friends was able to visit on her spring break, so we went to Puerto Vallarta and trekked around Monterrey. It was a fun week and a good reminder of home.

Spanish comprehension is vastly improving. Speaking is still not so good since I talk mostly in English on a daily basis. It’s a habit I have started here: often I am spoken to in Spanish but I reply in English because it keeps the conversation going. It’s bad and I need to take advantage of the Spanish while I can.

Also I am beginning to realize that in just over a month I will no longer be a student and don’t really know where I’ll be. I know I want to continue in this kind of stuff, but… Wow that’s coming up soon. I recently told a fellow student that I wouldn't mind staying in Mexico for at least a little longer and she replied "We send you guys thousands of people a year, and you return the favor by sending one. Sounds fair."

And for those of you really keeping up with this stuff, there are some new pictures and the albums about 10x10 have been updated as has the one about visits to rural Mexico.

Continuing 10x10 work

Since first reporting my first involvement with the 10x10 program in First Dirty Work of the Semester, there have been some other experiences with this. March 29 I returned to do some volunteer work and we went to Casa Rosinda, which involves building a new house for a woman who works at TEC who lives in a very poor neighborhood of town. Pictures of this worksite can be found at 10x10: Work.

The day began by fixing up the area where work has been started. The digging for the foundation had been completed and there were small to semi-large rocks strewn about that needed to be collected into neat piles. Then came the making of the reinforcing for the concrete footers that were to be put in place. This involved cutting pieces of #4 or #5 rebar with a handsaw and arranging them into grid pieces. These two tasks did not take too long and were relatively painless. The cutting of the rebar was somewhat difficult, but there were several people to share with the cutting.

Cutting the rebar

Tying the rebar together

Then came the difficult part: bringing the sand and gravel for the concrete to the site. Casa Rosinda is located at the very top of the neighborhood and amidst some of the roughest street terrain. It is very difficult to drive a regular truck through here, much less a dump truck with a load of sand and gravel.

The road that Casa Rosinda is located on

The solution was to dump the pile about 150-200 meters from the site, which was down the street and up a steep hill. To do this job we had some 5-gallon buckets, a wheelbarrow, and some more 5-gallon buckets that some of the neighbors lent to us. The first few loads went ok; taking two ¾ full buckets, one for each hand, easing down the hill, and then trying to use the momentum of the hill to power through the straightaway to the house. After about 5 loads, my arms, which have not had any exercise for some time, began to weaken. The muscles in my lower arm that control the fingers began to give out and I’d have to set the buckets down. I didn’t feel so bad because some of the others had similar problem, plus it was a very humid day, so dehydration was setting in. It was hard work but it was also fun being a spectator for the neighborhood.

After the first few loads, I was approached by a neighbor who asked me something in hard-to-understand Spanish. I told him I couldn’t understand and if he could repeat it slowly. After a few more tries he resorted to “tu quieres?” and made a smoking gesture. I made a slightly confused face, at which point he opened up his hand and showed me a bag with some crack in it. I politely refused and kept going with my buckets. On the next bucket load the same guy had moved across the street and was smoking a joint while he watched us.

A few days earlier I had gone to the same neighborhood with Roberto and Fernando, the two students who are in charge of 10x10, and we had seen the police had just arrested a man and had hopped on some horses to go up into the neighborhood to round up some more people. The drug aspect is very important in the north of Mexico. In my Contemporary Mexico class, we had a discussion last Thursday about how the presence of drugs, drug corruption, and general “other” areas of society are acknowledged in Mexico, but they are not spoken of, outside of major politics that is. It is almost a taboo subject. The professor made it clear to us foreign students that although the class felt comfortable speaking about this stuff in the class, once they got outside it just simply was not done. This was due to violence that has occurred and the fact that you never really know what the person you are talking to is involved in. This can be explored more with the phenomenon that many of Mexico’s musicians, especially in the north, have been killed in the past years because of drug related disagreements. I really do not know enough to go on about the subject, but relating all this information to how this man who offered me the drugs somewhat fits together. In a part where tourists or outsiders hardly ever go, the person offering was not very blatant about what he was offering. He probably used a phrase that implied something, but it fell on very un-understanding ears. However, a few days later when I was in Puerto Vallarta, a very tourist oriented place, a guy from across the street yelled at me offering some weed in both Spanish and English. Is there any substance here (no pun intended) or am I just making random connections, I’m not really sure. But it is interesting how these things seem to come together.

The following Saturday I again joined in for some 10x10 work and this time it was back to experimentation and investigation. As mentioned earlier, the walls for Casa Rosinda are going to be constructed from concrete formwork. The structure is going to be metal, and some more investigation needed to be made to finalize the design. Another project is also going to be using the formwork as the material, but the option of a wood structure is being investigated. My job for this Saturday was to help construct a panel made out of wood. Overall it was a good process, although the sizes and measurements were not determined until after I made the first cuts based on the measurements on the drawing. So the panels were not perfect, but they were good enough for the test. The main test was to see what kind of connection to use, and during this investigation it became apparent how difficult a multilingual jobsite can be.

The connection in question involved a 2x4 butting up against a 4x4. The first option was to simply nail them together, but it resulted in an awkward connection. My friend Janet, who goes to Purdue and has started joining us, made a suggestion that I understood as using two angles to put the pieces together. Then I suggested using what I called nailing plates which are used to put trusses together (I guess they’re really called mending plates). It turns out this is what Janet was trying to describe to me in English. So now that we were on the same page, the challenge became to convey the idea in Spanish. Eventually I ended up going to Home Depot to explain what we meant. It was a good suggestion because it turned out being the cheapest method of connecting the pieces.

Traveling for a week

The week before Easter Sunday is known as Semana Santa in many parts of the world. This week is when all Mexican universities have their spring break, and when many people go on vacation. In fact, on Thursday and Friday, almost nobody in the country works, from what I was told. I was also told that Thursday is known as Good Thursday because of the last supper.

A group of 8 of us set out to spend this week in a good fashion. It was a concensus that we all wanted to see Mexico City and see a beach. After some discussion and advice, we decided to spend 4 days in Mexico City and 4 days in Zihuatanejo in the state of Jalisco.

The trip began Friday night between 9-10 pm as the 8 of us all got on 3 different buses for the 11 hour trip to Mexico City. It may sound like an unpleasant ride, but they really know how to do bus travel in Mexico, especially if you ride first class. Plenty of room and easy to get to sleep. My bus started with the movie National Security, one of my least favorite movies, mainly because Martin Lawrence stars in it. After about an hour I had just begun to fall asleep when I hear a voice directly behind me shout "Necitamos los luzes!" I woke up wondering why the hell someone needed the lights turned on, just as the lights were turned on. I looked down to my left (I was in the aisle seat) and immediately understood: a woman had collapsed in the aisle and was unconscious. After a brief stop which involved a Coke and water, we were back on the road with everyone functioning correctly. The next thing I knew, I woke up and we arrived at the bus station in Mexico City 3 minutes later.

Many things were seen in Mexico City and pictures can be found in the links to the right. We stayed in a hostel that was perfectly located right on the main square and had a price of $15/night/person.

I could go on for awhile about what I saw, but there's something else that struck me; and you can visit Mexico City for yourself someday and see the same stuff. What really struck me was the amount of people who had informal means of income all throughout the city. I have heard several times about the high number of people in Mexico who have informal "jobs," and the even higher number within Mexico City. In Monterrey and the surrounding areas the only informal income practices I had seen were people getting on the city bus and selling snacks, people juggling at stop lights, and musicians performing outside in certain parts of the city--especially at night. But these home experiences were somewhat rare, maybe I experience them 3 times a week. Mexico City, on the other hand, had a more diverse collection of "jobs" and they were almost constantly visible.

First I will mention the people simply asking for money. In Indianapolis and Chicago, the two places I am most familiar in terms of people asking for money, they are usual men who are by themselves. Mexico City has mothers with their toddlers or infants sitting on the sidewalks, holding their child in one hand and an empty cup in the other. At night you could walk by some alleys and see families sorting through trash they had collected in order to find some food or possibly other things. In Wes's studio last semester, he emphasized several times the fact that 2007 was the first time in recorded history when more people live in urban areas than rural areas, and an average of 180,000 people are added to urban populations each day. Mexico experienced this rural flight in the 1980s as the economy suffered a crisis, and the move continues today. It is likely that the families we saw on the sidewalks were a part of this move, but have yet to find a stable way of living in one of the largest cities in the world.

One crazy idea I had while in Mexico City that stemmed from this observation involved an art exhibit that is currently in place on the Zocolo. The exhibit is known as the Nomadic Museum and is constructed of bamboo, shipping containers, and other materials that emphasize sustainability and reuse. The exhibit will end at the end of April, and the fate of the materials is unknown. Instead of moving all the materials to a new city or simply taking them to a landfill or scrapyard, why not explore ways of providing temporary shelter for the people on the nearby streets. Or better yet, a collaboration with the people to create a base structure from which they can build upon over time. I'm sure that some students in the nearby architecture schools would be happy to participate in such a project as there seems to be a fetish with shipping containers in architectural education these days.

Besides the people asking for money were people selling food and tourist junk in parks and on sidewalks. They would often yell at you to look at their stuff, especially at night which was a little unnerving.

The most interesting to me were the people on the subways. The first person I saw was a blind man leading his family from car to car with a speaker around his neck that would play snippets of a cd he was selling. This turned out to be a very frequent thing as nearly every stop your car was boarded by another person selling a cd or even dvds. There were also gum and candy sellers. What was really interesting to me about this was how many miles per day these people traveled all over the city. And I wondered if they ever got lost. But it got me thinking about other jobs that this type of transport could offer. Perhaps they are already in use? A "moving company?" A library book/movie rental return service? Dumb ideas? Yes, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

The most annoying informal job were the men at the pyramids of Teotihuacán. It was amazing how many of them there were selling blankets, carvings, stones, whistles, and more. Some parents elected to buy the whistles for their children. I remember the only 3 minutes where I did not hear any whistles during the 5 or 6 hours we spent at the pyramids.

After the 4 days in Mexico City the five of us heading to the beach again boarded a bus for an 8 hour trip. This time The Benchwarmers was playing. The movie did not impress me as it put to to sleep. We arrived in Zihuatanejo at just before 6 A.M. I called the hotel we had a reservation and was greeted by a sleepy voice in Spanish that clearly had the effects of years of smoking. It was a difficult call to get through, but I learned that we could not check in until 11 A.M. and we could not drop off our bags until 8 A.M. So we walked to the cab stand and headed to the beach nearest the hotel, which was only 5 blocks. There we sat on the beach with our baggage and watched the sun rise as the locals jogged by surely thinking we had camped out on the beach. Zihuatanejo began as a fishing village in the middle part of the 1900s and still has that type of feel. In fact, within the first hour we saw a man walk by with 4 fish dangling from some hooks he was holding in his hand.

Overall, Zihuatanejo was an excellent place to be in. I recommend the place if you ever want to go to Mexico and avoid the touristy areas. There is a major tourist resort 5 miles north if you're into that kind of thing, but only a small number of them come to Zihuatanejo. Also, there is a large central market that sells mainly food, but almost everything else as well. Our room had a kitchenette in it, so we were able to cook most of our meals.

The informal economy was present at the beach as well as many people walked from beach towel to beach umbrella selling sea shell necklaces, the service to cornrow your hair, sunglasses, and, the most disgusting one, ceviche at about 4 P.M. For those of you who don't know, ceviche is semi-raw seafood, usually something like octopus, squid, shrimp, or regular fish. At 4 pm on a hot day and being carried around on the beach it probably was not so fresh.

One more thing that made a very big impression on me was the guns that the police would carry up and down the beach. These things were huge, as in bigger than my legs. And they had huge bullets. I am not even close to a gun expert, but these looked like a cross between a stationary rifle and an AK-47. They were huge. And I don't know why they were there. But they were.

It was a good spring break, the most memorable so far.

The sunrise in Zihuatanejo