It's starting to sink in I think. Going through the catacomb like Port Au Prince, working with the local Haitians, riding around on motos and talking with people in the city. This situation, and the conditions people live in are not going to get better soon.
The cramped unsanitary living conditions, the three feet band of rotting rubbish lining all major thoroughfares, huge land fills, geographical and political instability... The more I think about Earthips, the more they make sense! I'm starting to believe, really believe, that they could seriously help how the Haitian people live. In Earthships Haiti could clean up their cities, and build sustainable, earthquake proof housing for it's people all at the same time! With $3000 a house for two families can be built, so just imagine what Haiti could do with say a few million dollars of funding? This could totally explode :)
Anyway, today I working for the whole day with Mike R, Amzy, Peter Cos and Saiswa on the big mushroom-like structure atop the main living dome. Amzy was busy using a vertical cross-stitch like pattern of heavy wire to strengthen the vertical re-bar base, whilst the rest of us started to clad the top in plastic bottle shingles. The cladding was more difficult than it sounds, as many of the tiles retained their original bottle shape memory, and fixing them all in place with wire was fiddly sharp work!
The design is very extravagant, and took a ton of time to shingle. but the overall effect is quite eye catching! The different coloured bottle tiles create an amalgamation of colour, that becomes especially interesting when the sun is setting. But the structure is still a little crazy for a simple ventilation cover, and probably won't be replicated on other builds.
Today Brian was busy creating nice finishes with local materials. For example he used bamboo and fixed strips of it to the inside of the ventilation shaft, giving a very pleasing finish out of free materials! He's also engineered a table out of bamboo to sit in the communal space between the main dome and the utility domes. It's this ingenuity that I love about Earthship. They really do USE their environment.
The Haitian crew though seemed very tired today. A solid week of hard manual labour is not what most of them are used to. I'm sure they will pull through though. They all seem to have a very strong resolve when they need to. Most of the hard labour has been done by now though- the excessive digging and tyre pounding- leaving us with mostly aesthetics to finish, and we still have a few Haitian hard cores :)
There was a little friction in the air though, as the security guards are now equipped with billy clubs, and in my opinion this, after the laptop incident doesn't help things. But you cant blame GRU, they're always trying their best.
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