David's PSF Blog

Below is a description of the projects I worked on during my time at PSF.


Las Dunas
Following the earthquake some whole communities had been flattened and have either stayed in the same location and are trying to rebuild their homes as before or have opted to move to new land to rebuild their lives in a different location. Las Dunas is one such community that has moved to the other side of the Pan American Highway and into the foothills of the huge sand dunes that line the edge of the vast desert region. The central Government of Peru in an effort to show the world they were giving aid to the town's people supplied a large percentage of the community cheap makeshift plastic homes. These had one room only, were nailed together and were simply placed on the ground. Now, with the help of a local church scheme, a few streets of the community are having concrete foundations laid and new brick homes constructed. The role of PSF in this project was to dig and prepare the foundations at which point the Church foundation will takeover. This project took roughly three weeks and we arrived for the last three days, two of which I worked on. The work consisted of pickaxing and where necessary jack-hammering the foundations and clearing away the rubble in long wheelbarrow runs. In the heat of Pisco this proved very hard indeed. It was a fantastic way to start our time at PSF due to the large team on site and the fact you were working right in the middle of one of the poorest communities dealing with the locals who also cooked you lunch every day.

Dinner
As discussed, each day several volunteers are required to cook dinner for everyone. For someone who has rarely cooked for more than two people (with the exception of a few barbeques) this proved a very enjoyable task especially when numbers were over 70. I cooked dinner twice, the first time in my first week when along with two others we joined Carolina in the kitchen. Carolina is the sister of the president, the local Peruvian who set up the charity around two years ago. Carolina has been a volunteer since day one and before having worked as a volunteer for Burners Without Borders the preceding organisation – also run by her family. She is a fantastic person with lots of energy and more importantly she used to run the kitchen and so is used to cooking for so many people. This day we cooked Lomo Salteado – a local dish. It's beef steak with chips, peppers, onions, chilies served with rice and salad. It was a really fun day visiting the market and buying at the meat and vegetables, although it was a little off putting at the meat market when there are flies buzzing around all the meat and not much in he way of the strict hygiene standards of UK supermarkets! It happened to be the birthday of several volunteers the same day and as a result we decided to make a large quantity of Sangira for everyone to enjoy as a surprise. As this would blow the budget, we decided to pay for it ourselves, especially since the cheapest box of wine cost just over 50p for 1litre!! The rest of the day was spent back at the volunteer house where we prepared the food. I took the responsibility for frying all the chips and enjoyed the “chippy experience” especially when it was an important task to taste each batch of chips! The sangria went down a treat and set everyone off for the big night we had in town!

After having a lot of fun with Carolina and the team, the second time I cooked it was again with Carolina and this time we opted for another Peruvian classic, Stingray (or Raya in Spanish). It was served breaded and fried and so I spent a lot more time with the pans frying the fish. We also made spring rolls (a local variant) and lots of salad.

New Volunteer House
During our stay, the organisation moved from it's original three buildings to a new larger headquarters nearby. This was a necessary step as the organisation has continued to grow and is much easier to run when everyone is under one roof! The new building is a hostal they have taken a open year lease on. From being handed the keys however there was a lot of work to be done including:
moving all the possessions from the previous houses
cleaning, repainting the old houses
cleaning the new house
building two new dormitories at the new house, one on the roof and one on top of the office
building a new kitchen
building a new out house for the bio diesel compound
building a new tool shed
concreting large portions of the yard
amongst other smaller tasks.

This meant that for the rest of the time we would be there lots of volunteer time would be spent at the house and not in the community, but it was a very important task and the quick completion of the new house would mean the organisation would be better set up to run its operations.

My first job at the new house involved expanding one of the dormitories. Along with Nick, a locksmith from Bristol, we were to take down a plywood wall out into the large hallway, then use the materials we could from that wall to build a new wall for an enlarged room. This was done so more beds could be fit into the room. With no carpentry experience between us we set to work and over 3.5/4 days we completed the task.
Being an NGO, money is obviously strictly monitored and all of it after the small amount spent on food and other facilities goes into the community. As a result, the aim for the construction of the new house was to be at as little expense as possible. One of the main reasons this was possible is because of the large amount of timber donated by a large Peruvian Steel company. This is wood that is used to transport steel and is mainly scrap wood, but we have first option to visit their site and shift through it all selecting the best – see below. What this means is that for our wall we were to use as good timber as we could find from the worst piles. It proved a tricky proposition, especially with the lack of tools and supplies available but we did it and were proud of the job done!

Sonja's House
Sonja is a lady who lives in one of the poor communities that was flattened during the earthquake. Here the community is rebuilding where their original houses stood. Sonja and her family have raised enough money to buy new materials for the house where needed and the role of PSF was to supply labour and tools to help her rebuild her home. I worked on this job for three days taking ownership for the completion of the job. This included helping construct several roofs of bamboo and asteria (small strips of thin bamboo nailed together in long strips), a small amount of concrete pouring and helping to clear all the rubble and dirt from the areas of the home that have been a construction site for so long. It was great fun doing this job as it was only two of us there with Sonja and it gave me the opportunity to use my Spanish all day. She was a delightful lady who helped really open my eyes to the long and arduous process it's been for so many since the earthquake. She has worked non-stop for three years along with her husband to try and rebuild and it was upsetting that we left with her having run out of money to complete the roof. I tried my best to source the materials she required but everything we had was required for other projects. Although frustrating, it showed the professionalism of this organisation where every project is assessed and prioritised to ensure the best use of materials. At the time we left they were in the process of raising money to help supply the materials required.

Olga's House, Kathryn & Hugh's Miracle Project concrete pour, Ludoteca School: All these were projects I worked on with Lynne which she has blogged.

Demolition Job
I spent just one day on this project at a house near the centre of town. It belonged to a couple who were looking to remove a wall and dig up some old foundations in preparation for the builders to build their new rooms. I was happy to see that we had the jackhammer booked as this one one of the power tools I was keen to try. We spent the whole morning jack hammering ans pick axing the old foundations. The wall they wanted taking down was complicated by the fact there was a huge crack diagonally across it which extended past the point they wanted to remain standing. With none of us being building or demolition experts it was obviously risky and in addition to being a little dangerous is would be too easy for someone who didn't know what they were doing to pull down the whole wall and the adjacent one. Over lunch we discussed this with the owner and a builder volunteer came to assess and agreed that we shouldn't touch it. Relieved we enjoyed the slap up meal they prepared for us, 2 courses, coca-cola and then a large bottle of beer each!!! In the heat of the day and after a hard morning this didn't help us get back to work!! Luckily there wasn't much to be done by us with the wall being a no-go. So instead we sat and “supervised” (watched!) a friend of the couple try and take down the wall against our advice by himself with the most minute regard for his own health and safety! At times he was trying to persuade the dodgy circular saw to start by spinning it with his own hand when plugged in! At one point he turned it on with the blade on the floor and almost lost his foot!! After lending him some of our tools we decided we couldn't stop him and left...it was at this point when we shook his hand that we noticed he had 2 missing fingers.....obviously some people just never learn!!!

Concrete Pours – Hillside community
The day after doing the concrete pour at Kathryn and Hugh's Miracle project (see Lynne's comments) I volunteered to join a team doing another large pour in a poor hillside community. Here, the family of the house had prepared the foundations and we were simply doing the pour with their aggregate and cement. Upon arrival we saw just how large these foundations were and that we were going to have to be taking the wheelbarrows of concrete over dodgy looking planks to access some of the areas! In total we went through 35 large bags of cement which equalled 70 pours! We did this in one go in the morning finishing for lunch at 14:30 – it was probably the hardest physical day of my time there especially after the previous days pour. We had just enough people to do all the tasks required but this required lots of rotation of duties. The lunch the family provided was substantial and after feeding us with shots of the liquor Pisco (very strong and nasty neat!) we all crashed out on the floor while we waited for the truck to pick us up! By the time we got back, we helped out in the yard at the new house.

Aceros Arequipa
As I have mentioned above, the majority of the wood used by the organisation is donated by Aceros Arequipa one of Peru's major steel manufacturers. They have a huge plant just outside Pisco where a large team of us went in trucks to sift and sort through their scrap wood piles. It was interesting to visit the plant and be transported from the run down town of Pisco to a very modern plant only just down the road. The plant reminded me of some of the large chemical plants I visited when a chemist all those years ago and we were amazed how western it felt. The job of shifting through the wood was good fun and involved the brave few of us to climb the unsteady mountains of wood and simply battle our way through it. Although maybe a little unsafe it was good dirty fun and by the end of the day I was the filthiest I have ever been!! Lunch was eaten at the site canteen with all the workers, a funny friendly bunch (bunch being a few hundred of the 1000+ who work shifts at the 24-hour plant). The trip back was spent in two trucks with all the wood as we needed to drop and resort it at our wood store near the house. One of the trucks was stopped by police twice and fined for carrying people in the back of the truck on the Pan American Highway which didn't amuse the driver but amused us.

Plastering and Painting the Old house
I spent only one and half days helping out a team plaster and paint the old volunteer houses in preparation for handing back the keys. With little tools we applied the plaster by hand before sandpapering it when dry and then adding the paint (which was a type of plaster mix again). In Peru, it is the responsibility of the landlord to supply the materials whilst the tenant does the work; therefore we had little input into what we could use. I was also required to remove the barbed wire from the roof and gate of the old house, a task that required the use a very heavy circular saw to cut through some rebar.

Kitchen Tiling
For my last day I fancied working at the new house, I therefore volunteered to help the resident carpenter who was responsible for building the fantastic new kitchen to fit the kitchen units and then tile them; Another new skill to add the list! I was able to fix the units to the walls easily enough before being shown how to prepare the mix and the tiling technique. I believe I did a good job and was happy to receive acknowledgement from some of the builders especially after dealing with some uneven table tops. Unfortunately these were heard by Lynne who now has me down to do the bathroom upon our return!!

Free time

In the eveneings, it was very common for everyone to enjoy a cold beer back at the house with possibly a generous slice of cake from "Cake Lady". A quick cold shower loater we'd return to the house for dinner. They organised activites for the evenings after dinner each week, the only one I partook in was football; either between ourselves or playing against the local tour guides. The matches against the tour guides was quite a feisty occasion...just the way 5-a-side should be!