It's Not Rock Science

We got our rocks and we got them for free. In the end, you get what you pay for.

Although what we received did not split easily under hammer and chisel, and certainly weighed the weight of what we thought we had bargained for, it was the rain that revealed the true nature of our rocks.

Some of these things
are not like the others.

The Ecuadorian Andes are not glacial mountains, though some do contain glaciers. They are not carved of solid rock; they are not of fixed height. The Andes are the geological result of the massive tectonic plates under the earth and ocean coming together and overlapping, a process called orogenesis (Greek: oros [moutain] + genesis [creation, origin]). Every year as the plates continue their movement, the plate on top is pushed slightly higher by the plate on bottom wedging itself further underneath. The top plate folds and deforms, giving birth to mountains. Growth of this sort is a slow thing, but I have heard it is the slow moving things about which one should worry, if one worries at all.

What is now the top, middle and lower strata of the Andes was once, so long ago the entire universe was noticeably younger, the bottom of a great sea. That sea contained mostly sand, a good deal of organic matter and a scattering of relatively small rocks. All of this has been mixed together and very slowly formed into mountains. As Oscar put it, ‘The Andes are made of cement.’ It is a weak cement and while great compressive force has wrought physically tough material capable of withstanding the blows of man and machine, water undoes its bonds in very little time.

Of course, there were signs that our rocks were not rocks. They were very brittle and broke under the chisel in odd ways. I guessed that something was amiss and left the stem-wall un-mortared and incomplete for a week while awaiting a response from an Irish stonemason I had met in Cloughjordan. His response came: he could not tell the rock from only a photo. By then it no longer mattered: the rain had revealed the truth.

The Truth within the rocks.

When the Universal Solvent
has dissolved the 'rock'
to a watery sludge, not even
a single pebble remains

The organic matter of our rocks had turned into a thick sludge not unlike clay slip, but much more watery. This sludge leaked down through the rocks and into the gravel drainage ditch where it covered the top course of gravel and became stuck. The rocks themselves looked like poor disintegrated piles of cement, with a melting exterior over a dry, hard and solid mass. The sight was miserable and the feeling terrible. In the end we had paid dearly for our free material with a month and a half of negotiation and hard labor down the drain — and the drain clogged!

In the Chota Valley we have a saying:

He who laughs last,

is surely Ingeniero Zapata.

Nobody gets in to see the Wizard. Not nobody.

Electric light on Chirimoyal.

Four A.M. in the valley of Chota. Darkness envelops all things, casting the mountains in dim outline against the sky. The water boils noisily on the stove, the only sound left. I pull on a warm camel-hair hat, pour a cup of coffee for myself and sit, staring out at the shadowy forms beyond the black mesh surrounding the kitchen, red nescafé cup steaming in my hands. The foundation trenches have been dug and the gravel infill filled in. It is time for the stone stem wall. One day has passed since the chief engineer of the province ordered Ingeniero Zapata to provide me with rocks from the excavation site.

The gate to the encampamiento appears deserted. I walk up to the hatch and bang on the steel door. I wait half a minute and bang again. To my left is a small guardpost jutting out from the monolithic concrete wall surrounding the encampamiento. The hatch in the guard-post slides open.

"How can I help you?" I turn left to face the unseen questioner.

"I would like to speak with Ingeniero Zapata."

"He's not here."

On the other side of the hatch a security guard in a bullet-proof vest with company insignia sewn over the right breast looks back at me. The time is not yet five A.M.: truth is still a relative thing.

"During a meeting with the chief engineer of the province two days ago at the MTOP headquarters in Ibarra, I was told me to meet Zapata here between four thirty and five in the morning."

"Let me go see."

The hatch closes. My hands are warm in the pockets of my vest. A hatch opens, the one beside the vehicular gate.

"Yes?" says a worker with a white helmet.

"I would like to speak with Ingeniero Zapata."

"About what?"

"About receiving a few dumptrucks of rocks from the road works near the old panamericana."

"What's your name?"

"Bartels."

"Wait here. Ingeniero Zapata is preparing the crew so he may be a while."

"I'll be here," I say, pointing to the pick-up.

The hatch slides shut.

From within the pickup cabin I watch the white cinder block change from black to grey.

"Hey!" The hatch beside the vehicular gate is open. The dawn quiet amplifies the sound of the pickup's doors opening with a heavy click and closing with a satisfying thunk. For the third time this morning I have a stranger's face.

"Well?" I ask.

"The Ingeniero says he can't spare any material."

"Look, do you know who Sofía Franco is?"

"The Ingeniera?"

"Yes, the same, head of the MTOP. I had a meeting with her two days ago and she had the chief engineer of the province call Zapata and tell him to give me the material I'm asking for. Please remind him of that."

"OK, I'll try telling him that..."

"Wait – could you just ask him to come over here and speak to me himself?"

"Wait here."

The vehicular gate-side hatch slides shut. The hatch in the guardhouse slides open.

"Who are you?" asks a security guard.

"I'm here to see Ingeniero Zapata," I say, turning to the left. "His boss called his cell-phone two days ago and ordered him to give me two dumptrucks of rocks from the road excavation by the old panamericana. My name is Bartels; I spoke directly with Zapata right here, two days ago at about this time."

"What do you need the rocks for?"

"For the foundations of a house I'm building."

"Where are you building?"

"On the old pana, just past where they are excavating."

"Ah, that's real close-by."

"Yes. Could bring Zapata for a moment? Just tell him who I am, he should know."

The hatch slides shut.

I kick at the lose gravel in front of the gate. The sun is beginning to rise. Metal rattles and the gate slides open. A white ministry pickup rolls out of the driveway, stopping before my pickup. A security guard walks over. How many security guards does the encampamiento employ? "Please move your pickup out of the way," he says, and points to a strip of bare earth between the encampamiento wall and the highway. I move my pickup and watch the gate close behind the ministry pickup. From within their pickup, one of the ministry men looks at me from under a yellow hat, and then their pickup turns onto the highway and is gone.

Dawn is a strange moment. The sun rises quickly while time passes slowly.

"Sir!" The gate-side hatch is open. I get out of the pickup and walk over.

"What's up?"

"I told Zapata what you said." Ah! At last, an acquaintance! I nod.

"He doesn't know who you are or what you're talking about."

"And I suppose he didn't receive a call from his boss the other day either?"

"That's right."

"Is there more than one Ingeniero Zapata here?"

"No sir, just the chief engineer."

"Can I speak with him please? If he's busy maybe you could let me in and I could see him in his office."

"I'm sorry, but Zapata has already left for the day."

"Well where can I find him?"

"I can't say – he drives around to all of the works in the region throughout the day. Your best chance is in the morning--"

"--between four and five-thirty?" I interject.

"That's right."

"Thank you," I say.

The hatch slides shut.

Zapata . . . !

A house must needs construction to be built. Just so hands must need work to construct. My hands, driving me all about in search of materials, were long in not doing construction work. For a second time in two days I visit the MTOP. This time however Ana, the secretary, lets me in to Sofía's office after a short wait. We exchange greetings.

"Did you receive the materials you needed?"

"No – Zapata said he neither remembered me, nor the phone call the chief engineer made to him – but I don't know, they didn't let me speak directly to Zapata."

"Hmm... In that case, you'll have to submit a written petition for materials, signed by the director of the NGO you are working with, yourself, and me."

"You'd sign something like that?"

"Sure, it's not a problem if we have the signature of the director of you organisation. We can't give materials and services to private individuals, but to organisations, yes."

"Alright! – thank you so much! I'll go prepare a petition for materials with the organisation. Will you be in this afternoon?"

"I'm here from three to four-thirty."

"OK – I'll come by between those hours for your signature."

"See you later."

"See you later, Sofía – and thanks!"

Aggregating Mistakes

We knew we would make many mistakes when we began this project. Today's mistakes are the seeds for tomorrow's successes, and we prefer to leave this project having made most of our grand mistakes in natural building. For your edification and amusement, here are some of the errors of our ways.

1. We'll just strap the baby on our backs and work together.

This one doesn't mind.

The baby, as it turns out, has plenty to say about that. Half of us is occupied with childcare in easy times, and on other days we abandon work on the natural house to cook, clean and nap. Parenting is a much harder job than natural building.

2. That looks fine, let's just go ahead and build.

We try to accommodate many different priorities here, sometimes leading us in a tricky balancing act with no right choice and many wrong ones. After digging and filling the foundation trench for the first attempt we realised we hadn't put enough thought into the design. The result was several awkwardly large rooms that had no flow. This and several other "mistakes" filled us with such regret we decided to scrap the first attempt, relocate the site, and begin again from scratch.

3. We'll organise the site later.

Chaos.

Order

When the schedule is placed before all else, quality of work is sure to suffer. Organisational lapses accumulate and boulders end up on the wrong side of a foundation trench. Piles of excavated earth block the work area, until they are haphazardly relocated to make way for a wheelbarrow. On an un-level site, just carting around 80kg of rock is a challenge. Alternatively, a site with even a minimum of forethought put into organisation is delightfully satisfying to work on and, personally, much more aesthetically pleasing. Sand, stones and earth handy where you need them; always a clear and level path for the wheelbarrow; safe for children to work and play in and around. They must mind the scorpions, of course.

4. Never trust Zapata.

More on this later.

5. Trust in ourselves and our vision.

(alternatively, Just Say No!)

There will always be someone who thinks they know better than us how to accomplish our dreams. Sometimes they do know better than us about the practicalities of getting there. But if we relinquish decision making to this person, at that point our dream ceases to be ours and becomes theirs -- and that is in the lucky case. Much more likely is that our dream becomes their side-project or resumé-padder, and we are pointed in the "right" direction and left on our own at the first difficulty. We cannot trust our intuition once we begin down this road because the project no longer comes from us, is no longer tied to our standards, nor to our aesthetic and technical vision. No matter how much more than us someone knows about a specific subject or way of doing something, we will stand firm in our decisions. Working to educate yourself without a teacher can be stressful and frightening. The final form of your work remains cloudy and the path to achievement is unclear. This project has been full of these experiences: learning to cement, learning to plaster, learning to build a dry toilet and grey water system, learning to build a stone foundation. I can say that ultimately, walking our own path is much more satisfying and, for me, has been much more edifying than following someone else. Even if it means restarting from scratch a couple of times.

Our intuitive interpretation of dry-stacked stone foundation. Taken before we applied mortar.

Orion's Belt

The longer you stare at the night sky the more stars are revealed. The patina of thinly spotted blackness dissolves and coloured spots of light twinkle into vision. The empty space between those spots is filled with a glowing cob-web of stellar illumination. Galaxies and constellations take shape

Under the stars, I think of our project in Ecuador. We had an idea that we would arrive in the country, proceed to work with Ainoa on our backs, helped by a small force of volunteers to finish the cob house and build a permaculture garden where we would grow most of our vegetables.

The longer we stay and work the more complexities and problems are revealed. The naïve vision dissolves and administrative realities make us spend time where we had not planned to spend it.

The water company's sense of humour.

Recently we lost water and spent a total of 14 days without drinkable water, and without any water at all for 12 of those days. I wish I could say this was a rare occurrence. The only thing to note this time was the extraordinary long duration of the stoppage.

Despite, although "in spite of" is more true to our feelings, all the misadventures and time wasted waiting in doctor's offices, lines at the utility company and Associasion Nacional de Transito, we have managed to complete more than nothing.

First, we have learned a lot. About ourselves, mostly. Call it knowledge, or wisdom -- the skein of accumulated experience that pulls judgement in one direction or another.

And then there's the house. It's not that we haven't worked on it, it's just that progress has been... well...

The first attempt at the house was rushed. We didn't level the site beforehand. The gravel trench was too shallow half around. We didn't tamp the bottom of the trench or the drainage gravel. The "rocks" we received for the stem-wall were actually aggregate full

Radiolarian is not rock.

of fossilised radiolarian, small mineral skeletons formed by oceanic protozoa eons ago, before the continental plates collided together and pushed up the Andean mountains; these "rocks" melted into a wet clay-like substance after the first big rain. We didn't use mortar between the rocks.

The second attempt, our current attempt, is much less rushed. We levelled the site roughly 2 meters around from the exterior of the walls. The gravel trench extends down a good 60cm under all parts of the exterior wall. We tamped the bottom of the trench and tamped again after each 15cm layer of drainage gravel. We built the stem wall with rocks we had ordered from a quarry. We are currently mortaring the rocks together to prevent the biting flies, cockroaches, mice, opossum and scorpions from sneaking in. The spiders we don't mind so much, especially since they tend to consume unwelcome insects. Even the brown-widows are guests on the outside-facing parts of the stem-wall.

Hello, Lycosidae friend.

Doing things properly takes a lot of time. The satisfaction of a job well-done comes at the price of an extended schedule and a lot of effort. We gladly pay this price, and then grimace as environmental variables double it.

Between the first and second attempts it rained and the radiolarian melted into the drainage gravel. We had to remove the radiolarian from the gravel trench, some of it with a 18-pound sledge-hammer, the wooden handle of which broke after three strikes and had to be replaced with a steel tube. The remaining gravel was covered with a layer of concrete-like organic matter that prevented drainage. We continued to have rain. The layer of radiolarian turned into a gooey glue which no amount of sifting would remove. So we shovelled the gravel out of the trench and spread it out on the ground to dry it in the sun and air. When it had dried we sifted it twice and carted it over to the new site by wheelbarrow.

Hard work.

We filled the gravel trench on the second site and tamped it. We began dry-stacking the rocks we had moved from large piles next to the first site. Some were so heavy we had to roll them the 15m into place. After dry-stacking, we began to mix cement and sand to make mortar. Mortar mixes require a good amount of water available, both for incorporation in the mix and for wetting and cleaning tools. Monthly water outages are common in the region, sometimes for up to five or six days per month. When we began to mix mortar we lost water on the third day, for four days. On the fifth day the water came back and we lost electricity in the afternoon. Of course, our mixer is electric. The next day electricity was restored. Two days later we lost water, for four days, and on the fifth day the water ran from the faucet dark grey, all day. So we came down to Quito for a week, from where I write now.

Siga no más

"Siga no más:" the first Spanish phrase I taught to Oliver.

"Go ahead; Proceed; Continue; Carry on." Those three words carry these ideas in Ecuadorian Spanish.

Oliver came to us fresh from his apprenticeship with the Cob Cottage company. He is a young man ripe with ambition and for five weeks he worked alongside us to accomplish the next stage of our project. In natural building they say that planning and foundations are the most intensive stages of building. We made use of Oliver's tremendous physical efforts to proceed swiftly through these stages. Just look at the materials we obtained:

• 10m^3 of gravel infill for drainage in the foundation trenches
• 36m^3 of stones for the stem wall
• 27m^3 of clay-filled soil for cob mix
• 16 bales of straw for cob mix

I'm excited to say that materials are nothing without hard labour. As we swung shovels, heaved rocks, and laboured away with chisels and sledge hammers, we realised the formal beginnings of the house. We dug the foundation trenches, filled them with gravel, stacked the stem-wall to near completion, poured a concrete column and built a brick wall for the installation of electric and water connections and finally erected a frame for the dry toilet. A fine list of accomplishments for only five weeks!

There are many stories to tell, and I hope to regale you readers with them in the coming weeks as the machinery of this blog spins back to motion.

Oliver left Ecuador on October 1st, early in the morning. He plans to look for work from Seattle and he hopes to begin a contracting business in Guatemala when he has earned sufficient start-up capital. 

Oliver, triumphantly appraising the poured cement column and
2.5m galvanised steel tube assembly.

Thank you, Oliver, for your hard work! Best of luck in your future endeavours.