Jean Louis & I got the finish coat on the back room in the Ti Kay Pay yesterday- it looks great. So far, there are a few small shrinkage cracks, nothing to cry over. We ran out of river sand, and are short on clay (our clay had been stored in a large bin, and after we left, the GRU staff needed the bin back, so the clay got dumped...we salvaged what we could from that pile, and now we have had to salvage materials from other digging that has gone on here on the property). I tried samples using river sand, and using some of the limestone sand that is here on site, but both yielded way too much cracking, so now...the waiting game. Aaron ordered a load of sand today, which is needed to plaster the earth bag building, so we'll use some of it to get the last section of floor done. Jean Louis quite enjoyed trowelling on the finish floor.
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| Finish coat for the floor of the Ti Kay Pay |
I still haven't painted the butterfly that Andy sculpted onto the plastered wall, but have whitewashed the background. I forgot to look for coconut oil when I was at the grocery store today- what a dummy! I was distracted by looking for curry ingredients, as a couple of us are going to make dinner tomorrow night. We are going to attempt to use coconut oil as a hardening oil on the floor, possibly adding blood, as they would have done once upon a time. We'll see- apparently they slaughter a cow just down the laneway every Saturday, so if I can arrange to be there to get the blood...it could be added to the oil and rubbed into the floor.
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Jean Louis applying the third coat of whitewash around the butterfly
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I spent the afternoon helping shovel soil for the earthbag project. I am encouraging them to hurry up and get the bags all in place, so that we can hopefully get to some plastering before I have to leave.
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Venting PVC pipes have been put in between rows of bags. Some of them are getting quite squished- there is a lot of weight in these bags!
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Earthbag washroom facility coming along. We're wondering how those bags will stay up after the form for the arch is pulled away...
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Ideally, they were going to crush rubble for the bags, but the rubble that was ordered some time ago just showed up today, after the bags were past the half way point. So, we used the rubble to fill in the newly dug trenches coming from the outdoor showers. I had used some of the rubble in the rubble crusher when we were doing the plastering of the straw house, but haven't really spent time sifting through a pile of rubble. Today, as I shovelled rubble into the wheelbarrow, I had a few quite moments as I came across purses, broken shoes, bras, letters, telephone chargers, and other broken bits of items in the pile, remembering that these rubble piles have been collected both from the streets, and from businesses and homes that were damaged in the earthquake. Small glimpses into people's personal belongings, which led me to wonder if these people had survived the quake. Sometimes, when you are here for awhile, the earthquake seems far away, as you get immersed in projects and community. Today, it was brought back for me in a sobering way.
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