Day two of Bottle School Project

January 4, 2012 Day Two

Today was even better than yesterday. We had all but one of the families represented to work on building the classroom and I had some kids and a friend of mine come help to fill bottles. So far we have enough bottles full and ready for one whole line of one wall. Technically we have enough bottles for the whole classroom but a lot of them are missing some plastic trash and need to be stuffed some more. Luckily, we have enough plastic trash thus far to fill them. It was still pretty windy today but not as bad as yesterday. We finished some of the columns and main feet for each column today so when we finally finish the foundation (which we should be getting to in the next two days or so) we will be ready to put up the iron bars for the foundation and columns for the walls. We still need to get the sand, cement blocks and gravel for the foundation and the beginning of the walls but tomorrow the foremen are going to go to the bank where the funds will hopefully be ready and waiting for us, but money does move rather slowly here.

One evaluation for future project managers of projects like this, and this may seem like a no brainer but bear with me: Make sure that you get a fair price for your labor. Foremen here and I believe everywhere will try and take you for all they can get. I have worked tirelessly to get my foremen to lower their labor fees and we finally settled on a final budget and work contract which everyone signed and THEN I remember something crucial which is when I calculated their work days, I also calculated Sundays which they most likely will not be working, so they are getting paid one day a week to not work. Stupid, I know. But what makes me feel better is I did get them to pay a helper out of their own pay, so that Sunday will go to him. It is so hard trying to pay people what they ¨should¨ be paid. The pay here daily would be slave wage labor in the states so I have a hard time paying someone to do an entire days work of hard labor with little rest in the hot sun for only $8 a day. That’s when they are a foreman who is certified to do the work and they work at least from 7am to 5pm. If they are just another worker helping with the labor they get paid about $4 a day. I am paying my workers for the whole job that they are doing instead of on a daily basis but it´s about $12 a day but they work every day of the week minus Sundays from 7am to 6pm and they don’t really rest at all except to eat. I am definitely over paying them by peoples standards here but I know these guys, their families and their living conditions which makes it a lot harder and makes it hard for me to be impartial and get them to work for less. But I have learned so many lessons throughout this project and this is just another one to add to the list for any future development work that I may do.