Abanico, Día gringo, la disco/la vida, gerencia

Puras Vidas para todos (pure lives for everyone). I have more news on the Abanico “housing crisis” that I described in my last post. Abanico is the name of the town where 60ish houses are being built for people with few resources aka poor. The problem is that 40 houses are already complete but sit empty and everyone wants to know why. Well here are some reasons why:

-The gov. does not want anyone to move in until all the houses are complete so they can build a sense of community.
-The families will need the housing voucher to be able to buy the house, which the gov. has suspended for the time being.
-Of the original 130 families that applied for the houses, only 5 families qualified.
-The gov. has a gynormous amount of requisites the families must comply with before they can purchase and move into the home.
-There is a big pile of sand and stone blocking the entrance of vehicles into the housing project.

The list goes on but basically the story goes that Habitat got a big loan from a somewhere in Europe to build these houses. They decided to build all 60 at once to utilize cost savings from ordering in bulk. That makes sense and all but then you should beef up your construction resources. I was there the other day and they had maybe five ppl working. Knowing that you can’t move ppl in until you are complete should put some pressure on the construction schedule. However everything seems pretty pura vida as of right now. I think the bigger issue is not having all the families lined up. We were going to interview in August families who wanted to move to the project but I’m guessing it is hard to find families that qualify due to the recent economic crisis, with costs going up and wages staying the same or lowering due to the devaluation of the colon. It was brought up why the project couldn’t be done in say 3 phases of 20 houses each? Build 20, move 20 families in, then start the second phase etc. That would get you around the government road block at least. The downside there is you lose the economy from ordering in bulk, prices could go higher, and who knows they may only have a certain amount of time to use the loan or they will lose it. There are a lot of things that I would do different, but who knows what kind of other restraints are put on a project like this to cause it to go like it is. There are a lot of things that haven’t been well thought out, like where are these ppl going to work, how are they going to get transportation etc. The site was selected because the land was cheap, however it means driving down a bumpy stone road for 2-3miles to arrive at a small town with a school, church and convenience store. What is going to happen to when 200+ ppl move in at once?

Anyways let’s back up a little bit. In my last post I mentioned I would be spending a day with donors from the US on a day trip that happened last Friday. As usual you never find out exactly what is going on until you get there the day of. What was going on last week in San José was a big Latin America Habitat conference, where fundraising personnel from different US affiliates were invited to participate. I didn’t know this but US Habitat affiliates are required to donate a percentage of their earnings to International Habitat offices. The people that came to this conference represented different regions of the US and also were the ones that solicit the big bucks from the major donors. So this conference lasted the whole week with Friday being the day trip excursion for the group. I got invited as the group wanted to meet the long term volunteers.

We went to a souvenir shop, visited a Habitat house and then we went to a swanky hotel/spa resort for lunch with a view of a volcano Arenal. I thought we were going to stop at some smaller Costa Rica typical food restaurant but we passed through the resort town and headed for the volcano where the higher end tourist destinations were, me all along looking out the window at all of these places that I never thought I would see from the inside until we pulled into Montaña del Fuego. There we ate a pretty decent lunch and then went to Abanico to plant trees and see the project. We had thirty ppl and thirty trees so everyone would get to plant one, however the group became very tired and so only about half of the trees were planted and we left the rest for the construction workers to plant. The group got so tired that they passed on dinner to return to the hotel. I don’t know how they got so tired but it was funny to see the look of disbelief on the faces of the Costa Rica Habitat ppl. They couldn’t believe they weren’t going to go and eat dinner, even though it had been already paid for.

I felt pretty spoiled the whole day and felt a little out of my comfort zone. Travelling with US people, on a tourist bus with air conditioning, and eating at a palace all made me feel a little out of place. It was ok though, it is nice to have that break from the norm. I found out about the tropical storm in Florida and caught up on some college football news. I also got to chat with the National Director for Habitat in Costa Rica and met some other people from the national office that I hadn’t met before. One guy in particular found out from the National Director that I spoke pretty good Spanish so he wanted to test me to make sure I was for real. Well I passed his test no problem but I’m always hesitant to jump into a conversation after someone says yeah talk to this guy his Spanish is excellent. We spent most of the time talking about places in the US because he lived there for 9 years and had travelled all over the place mostly by train.

After we finished in Abanico the bus went back to San José but I stayed behind because some friends of mine invited me to go out to the disco with them. This disco had a huge first floor for dancing and a second floor mezzanine with a bar. There weren’t a whole lot of people so everything was on the mezzanine. One thing to note about the disco in Costa Rica is that they play all types of club, reggaeton, reggae, techno, and pop but also mix in salsa and meringue and sometimes cumbia. They play each genre for maybe 20min and then switch to the next genre. Well I went about 30-40min without stopping because they played salsa and meringue back-to-back. And Latin dancing is not like club music where you can dance at your own pace, with this you have to keep the beat and lead your partner well. Somehow I survived (till 4am) as the ticas (Costa Rican women) that I danced with never got tired. I have to say Latin dancing has become probably the most enjoyable thing that I do on a weekly basis. I finally found the right class that matches my abilities, so I’m excited to see how good I’ll be in December. Another thing that I enjoy immensely in Costa Rica is how laid back things are.

Every day I’m able to wake up at my own pace and get to work, a leisurely 2-3min walk from my house. Everyone gets in around 8am and the first thing we do is eat a light breakfast, usually bread and butter with coffee and chat about whatever till almost 9am. From there we do work till about 12pm and then we have lunch until 1pm. During that hour we close the door and lock it and we don’t take phone calls or nothing. Then from 1-330 or 4pm we work and then have another 15-30min coffee break with crackers and then we close up at 5pm. Pretty awesome if you ask me, I used to feel bad if I took lunch longer than 30min, where here 3 breaks a day seem mandatory. Granted not everyday is like this but it happens pretty frequently as a cultural norm.

Life should get a little interesting the next few weeks as we are going to start managing the construction of some model homes. I’m working right now getting the budgets and schedules and spreadsheets together to track the progress of the construction. A lot of outsiders I find have a hard time understanding what exactly construction managers do. A lot of people here think that I’m out working on the houses each day. When I tell them I don’t do that then they think I am the engineer or architect. It actually involves quite a bit of things that put together requires someone to manage them. There is the schedule, the budget, the scope of work and customer satisfaction that all must be managed by someone. They are the ones who get all the glory and take all the heat based on the success of the project.

Other notes this week:

-Is it just me or does it seem like Obama is going to take this thing in a landslide? I think he would win Costa Rica in a landslide if it were part of the US. My family is glued to CNN this week because of the Democratic Convention. We’ll see how the Republican Convention goes.

-Apparently US Open tennis takes priority over preseason Monday Night Football in Costa Rica. That better not happen during the regular season.

-Travelling last weekend I was able to avoid the rain for two straight days. I don’t know if I was just in the right place at the right time or the storms/hurricanes in the Caribbean are messing up our rainy season.

-I’m totally hooked on the national Costa Rica soccer team. They had a World Cup qualifying game against El Salvador which they won 1-0 but I couldn’t sit still most of the game. It must be a hang over from when I watched them play in the World Cup of 2006 but sometimes they give me the jitters just like the Packers.

-My host mom makes incredible hamburgers.