Dec. 13th Community Inauguration!

We’ve set the date!  Join us for a fun afternoon community inauguration of our new building!   Its been a long project and we’re planning a big party!

Home Depot!

Months and months and months ago before we had even started construction I walked into Home Depot, saw a sign somewhere about social responsibility, found myself a store manager and confidently suggested that a very good example of social responsibility would be for Home Depot to contribute to our project.

Of course, Home Depot already has it all figured out and I was assured that they would be interested in participating but they have a busy schedule and would need us to get them the appropriate paperwork, schedule a revision meeting, get approval, etc..   I was also quickly informed that they didn’t have a large budget for donations but would be happy to give us their returned paint.

Cool.

4 months later, at 7am in the morning, 25 orange t-shirted and very eager Home Depot Team Members arrived in the Bodega at entreAmigos.   After a quick tour, and an american football style huddle and impressive company cheer they self propelled themselves into every task imaginable.  They painted and cleaned and gardened with an energy, great attitude and fervor that left us all open mouthed and very grateful. They donated more than $30,000pesos in rejected paint and apologized profusely that they couldn’t do more.

A few hours into the day the rest of the community joined them.  Several local women brought food and drinks to prepare for everyone, the kids came and we painted and painted and painted.   By 1:00 when the Home Depot team needed to return for their afternoon shift, the majority of the 13,000sq foot building had been finished on the inside.  The change was remarkable.

Wow.  simply wow.

and thank you Home Depot!

working for food

Everyday at least one person comes into the construction site and asks me for a job.  Many days it is four or five different people, or complete crews, or entire families.

The reality of the economic crisis  hit San Pancho hard this summer.  Many families that joined the population of this community in the last few years had come here very poor and looking for work.  The construction boom in the area provided an income and families began to settle in and stabilize.

Now, after nearly a year of a slumping economy most construction projects have been stopped or canceled.   Many families are facing critical situations of no work but also no resources to pick up and move.  If you add the effects of the swine flu scare, the dengue outbreak and the road construction it is a wonder that people have made it through at all.

September has always been the hardest month for the San Pancho economy and this year was no different.  People were coming in asking for work with a different look in there eyes and a different tone in their voices… “any work, anything, just one day, etc… “     The idea of trading food for work came about when we received several donated despensas by a Vallarta Mexican family that had been to San Pancho, seen our website and wanted to help out.   A despensa is a box of food that contains all of the staple items in the Mexican diet, it is a traditional package that govt and other agencies use to distribute food.  We began to distribute the despensas to families that we knew were in need and a few days later several women showed up at our door and asked if they could offer us work in exchange for food.  We still had some despensas on hand and we certainly could use the help.

Word traveled fast and soon there were many, many people (mostly women with small children), coming to ask if they could do anything in exchange for food.  Many of these families we had worked with before and we knew they were in dire situations, but many others were new families and we are in the process now of getting to know them and their stories.

We are distributing dispensas now to some families in need who aren’t able to work with us and to many others who are.  The women come with their collection of babies and one of them is dedicated to watch all the kids while the others help out in odd jobs of painting, recycling, cleaning etc.  Teresa, a local woman who forms part of the group also takes it on herself to organize and manage the women and distribution.

As with many things at entreAmigos, the food to work program seemed to start on accident and then take on a momentum of its own.  In a way its a nearly perfect circle of people giving and receiving in the way that they need to and can.

I am always, always, always completely blown away by the generosity of the giving community here in San Pancho and this time is no different.  I want to sincerely thank Barbara and Eileen for getting out the word and the many, many people who have contributed food to this project.   Please join us any day of the week to meet and work with the women or just to take a look around and see all the activity!

the roof

the roof.

this is a picture of our very beautiful new roof… and a really long entry about how it came about.

the roof has been the grand anomaly of this project since before it even was a project.

When we first were looking at the bodegas as an option for moving we were told that the roof tiles were asbestos.  When we started thinking seriously about asking for a bodega, we wondered about what it would mean to somehow protect ourselves, our children and an entire community from old, flaky asbestos dust.   The advice was, “well, its okay if you don’t move it, or it doesn’t move, or… ” The thing is that the roof is also home to a healthy iguana population whose scratching and scurrying didn’t bode well for the just don’t move it plan.

After receiving the bodega the first thing we did was send off one of those roof tiles to a testing lab in the big city.  Turns out the tiles are just plain old, very old, concrete.  Celebration!!!

We then figured we had just saved ourselves a healthy chunk of stress and money and we took up the task of figuring out the patching or fixing that we would need to replace the broken tiles.  And then it rained… which is well documented previously here, and we realized that we had a much, much bigger problem on our hands.

Of course, nothing to worry about as we were all plenty creative and certainly a great and at least semi-reasonable  remedy could be found!   oh… and boy we sure tried.  We could clean it and seal it, we could take it down and put it back up, we could throw a giant tarp over the whole thing, or what about one under the roof and the little water drips could slide on out the sides… heck! the dripping water could be recycled into the planters and we’d have an amazing green system.  problem solved!

and then we talked to a few less bright eyed builders (or maybe just a bit more realistic), all of whom pointed out that we were looking at an awful lot of patching, and more patching, and more patching….  and even then it wasn’t likely to really work…. or we could pour a layer of concrete over the whole thing and be done with it… as long as it didn’t cave in on us of course.

Several times throughout the process, Anwar would say something that sounded like “new roof” and I would conveniently pretend I didn’t hear.  New roof = way too expensive and that was that.   Then, Anwar and I happened to be at the steel yard, and he mentioned those new roof words again, along with something like,  doesn’t hurt to check and see...

And so I checked out the galvanized steel roofing that they had and casually asked the attendant if he could tell me what it would cost to roof 1500 sq meters.  Yes, I was sure it was 1500 sq meters, I answered his raised eyebrows.   Of course by then I had already fallen in love with this lamina that they had on site, it was painted white on one side and a translucent blue on the other.  I was imagining a roof that just blended into the sky… beautiful!  But I was waiting for the price that would end my starry day dream.  “$120,000 pesos”, the man said…  so something like $10,000usd? Could it really be?  Wow, we could do that!  Wow, its less money than fixing the old one!  Wow…    I was hooked.

Turns out that they didn’t have anymore of those nifty blue and white laminas.  No worries I told the man, we have time, we can order them. Turns out they don’t make those nifty blue and white laminas anymore, that they were some kind of special order.  No worries I told the man, I will special order them. Turns out they don’t even know where they got the nifty blue and white laminas.  No worries I told the man, I will find them somewhere else.

And thus began the six week search for the laminas.  No worries I told myself, we have plenty of time. Somewhere along week two I had given up on nifty blue and was working on just white.  White on the inside and white on the outside like they have at every Walmart, Mega or other super store.  No worries I told myself, they have to be easy to find. For some reason that should have made me stop, breathe and consider a plan B, white laminas are also all special orders and no one seems very fond of special orders and although I think my 1500 sq meters is HUGE and people should treat me like a purchasing goddess when I walk through their doors…. the truth is that big warehouses are pretty common, mine was comparatively small and I could wait until they got around to me.

The guy who finally agreed to order my laminas was the guy I liked the least (and believe me, I knew them all).  He nearly choked when I asked him for a partial donation and presented my pretty letter all stamped and signed.  I was promptly informed that donations and discounts went against company policy.  Ugh. some company I grumbled.   Anways, I then decided it might be a good idea to hire the roofer at the same time just to be sure that we were ordering the right amount of laminas and to order whatever else he might need at the same time.  Another week passed, time was getting awfully close and I still had to order the laminas, wait for the laminas and then put them on.

The price quote on the white laminas was slightly higher than the other one but I figured if I could get the entire job done for around $15,000usd we were still doing really well.   The big day comes to order the laminas and all of the little extras that the roofer needed. “$205,000pesos,” the cashier says to me. WHAT!   Turns out the extras aren’t that little, mostly because the roof isn’t that little, turns out we had forgotten the need for rain gutters, or sealers, or 5000 pijas or…   Turns out also that the cost of steel had been skyrocketing over the past few weeks and they couldn’t honor any previously quoted prices.  I was liking the guy less and less and less…

But now, there wasn’t really time to try to fix the roof, the price of steel was going up every day and it was now or never.  So I ordered the laminas and was assured that they would arrive in 3 weeks.  I figured I was being prudent to wait to remove the old roof just before the 3 weeks came to pass.   This was mexico, undoubtedly it would arrive a bit late.  5 weeks later I apparently had laminas somewhere but the steel company couldn’t manage to get them from vallarta to san pancho. It was some strange excuse about them being too heavy?  Do these people not do this for a living?  My roof can’t possibly be heavier than someone else’s roof? anyways…

When the roof finally did show up, the whole entire $20,000usd worth of materials would have fit perfectly fine in the back of any Ford Pick-up.  “When are you bringing the rest,” I asked?   “This is all of it, sign here,”  he said. Seriously, the pile of white laminas wasn’t even 2 feet high, the 5000 pijas fit in a paint bucket and the other assorted extras were just kinda there.  Of course, my incredulity just spoke of my inexperience and the steel guys probably had a good laugh showing me that the thin laminas fit one inside the other and that yes, they were really, really heavy.  I’m sure they weren’t laughing when I made them count every single one of the 400 laminas, 32 caballetes, 10 laminas lisas… although I did show restraint in refraining from requiring a count of the 5000 pijas.

While I’m having my various go arounds with the lamina vendors, the painters were under pressure to get the beams painted before the roof went on.  The poor painters.  Cuchin is a local painter that many people probably know.  He’s a good guy and has worked on me with other projects. I asked him to give me a price on painting the roof beams of the bodega and I know that he really tried to give me the pest price he could.  At $20,000pesos it was feeling expensive but the roof is huge and I trust Cuchin.  He also said he thought it would take a couple of those big buckets of paint and a few weeks to complete.  About 5 days into the painting, Cuchin and the four guys working for him had only covered probably one fifth of the bodega and had already used every bucket of paint.  I could do the math and know that there was no way the money he quoted was going to last, even if he charged nothing for himself.  So… it was no surprise when he said, “Nicole, I really need to talk to you.” Today we are four weeks into painting, have gone through 10 cubetas of paint and have only finished one side of the bodega.  At the current rate of evaporating money I think we’ll have to settle for one side and work on the rest little by little.

Today we are two weeks into roofing and only about 400meters short of a finished job!  The roof is beautiful and will end up costing about $30,000usd which represents more than 1/3 or our budget.  I feel like I should say something like it was a bad idea or I wish we didn’t do it but the truth is that although it will mean that we can’t finish other areas planned for the bodega (at least right now), I think that the roof is probably the best thing that we could have done.  Its like having one big giant worry checked off the list… forever!