Yesterday I tweeted "Seems we have skipped Spring and gone straight from Winter to Summer!"

That Summer weather resulted in Nicola and I working in our garden. My task for the day was removing bricks from a rockery created by a previous owner at the bottom of the garden and moving them to the top of the garden. The plan is to recycle them in some future project.

This task made me think back to our time in Argentina and our friends at 22 De Enero. On our very first working day we moved bricks for Daniel and created a human chain to assist the process.

Yesterday I had to shift the bricks myself and I realised how much quicker it would have been with the help of others. This reminded me of Germán who had told us that our help had accomplished in one afternoon what would have taken him several days to do on his own. Indeed this was true of all the projects we worked on in 22 De Enero.

Many hands do indeed make light work.

This blog post will provide a recap of the run up to our Habitat for Humanity Global Village Challenge and our time building in Buenos Aires. It will be a useful reference point for the 70 blog posts that have preceded this one.

This Blog and the inkstersgive.com website were officially launched on 23 September 2009 with thanks to corporate sponsor, Innovation Digital.

There is a link from the InkstersGive site to our JustGiving  page, and it was not long before the donations started rolling in. This included our first US donation from Richard Prickman of Bitcher & Prickman. However, he was not allowed to outdo his Partner, Beatrice Bitcher. There followed more donations from my Twitter followers including generous corporate sponsors: The Trial Warrior, Silverman Sherliker and Valentilaw. The generosity of Twitter followers was overwhelming as seen in Fundraising and the Power of Twitter and #FollowFriday for Just Giving.

We had asked for help to cover our hard hats with logos and were having good success. In addition to those corporate sponsors already mentioned we had Inksters, Page\Park, Harley Haddow and Theatreplan on board. They were to be joined by Barr Brady, Oce and Jeffrey Aitken.

We were getting plenty of attention in the legal and architectural press, all helping to raise awareness and encourage donations.

In amongst all this we started Spanish classes with a teacher from Argentina at Centro Español Loco. We were to go on to take 5 Spanish lessons in total. Our teacher ended up joining our La Bordona Tango class at Sloans.

I read a Chinese Poem from 700BC. Our T-Shirts were printed and offered for sale. We were all set to head to Argentina.

Nicola and I arrived in Argentina a couple of days ahead of the rest of our Group. This gave us a chance to acclimatise and recover from the jet lag before beginning building work. It also meant we experienced floods in Buenos Aires on our first day there.

When the rest of the Group (13 of us in total) arrived from the UK it was straight into Orientation and learning about the 22 de Enero neighbourhood that we would be working in.

Then building works commenced. By the end of day 4 which consisted of painting, digging holes and moving concrete fence posts I was very tired but equally elated. Our active filled days passed by quickly with a brick wall, yellow paint and a concrete column, not to mention a higher wall, more yellow paint and a bedroom extension.

We were also able to celebrate the work we had done with the community when we attended the inauguration of the room we painted yellow.

On a day where work was rained off we had the opportunity to visit the Recovering Urban Homes Project and learn of the other work Habitat for Humanity was doing within Buenos Aires. On the way Jas met Maradona in La Boca.

On day 8 and on day 9 we were given time off for rest and relaxation. This allowed us to see Buenos Aires and take in some Tango.

Then back to work and Nicola and I worked together one morning on Tito’s wall. Nicola spent most of her time in La Matanza building Tito’s wall and became a very accomplished bricklayer as a result. I moved around more to work on different projects such as building Miguel’s walls, moving earth at Alejandro’s property, moving rubble at Antoñin’s house, and building Germán’s tower. This gave me a good perspective on the different living conditions and family units that exist in 22 de Enero. It had been particularly gratifying to help the poorest of these families who were just starting out to build homes to replace the shacks they were living in.

Our time at La Matanza came to a close and we had to say farewell to 22 de Enero community. The families were truly grateful for the time we had spent with them and the work we had been able to do for them. Beba wrote a thank you note and Alejandro wrote that “if all the world helped like you, all the world would be better”. With tears in our eyes the bus took us out over the dirt track from 22 de Enero and back to Buenos Aires.

Then it was time to say farewell to Hábitat para la Humanidad Argentina and have a “make your world a home” photograph taken.

Back in the UK I blogged that it was “over but not out”. Indeed with Tessa Shepperson making Habitat for Humanity her Charity of the month at Landlord-Law Blog and Armitage Associates becoming our Christmas Corporate Sponsor the fundraising continues. As 2009 comes to a close I will be considering how best we can retain links with our new friends in 22 de Enero and help them in 2010. In the meantime please help them this Christmas by giving at www.justgiving.com/argentina2009.

Tito’s daughter Beba wrote a very touching note in both Spanish and English on behalf of the whole family. This was read out at the farewell with the families:-

“Thank you very much for giving us a little bit of your time....For helping us to continue the construction of our home, for the enthusiasm, the sympathy, and the effort.

Thank you for sharing with us the beautiful experience. You all were not only a help but also a visit, and we will be waiting for your return with anxiousness.

It will be a great pleasure for Argentina and for us to receive you again.

It would be a pleasure for you to return to visit us, not only to help us though it will always be well received. We would love for you to return so that we could share a little more time together.

Thank you so much and we hope to see you soon”.

Read: Farewell to 22 de Enero Community

Hola

Over the course of 5 days I have been working with Tito to improve his home for his family: his wife Graciela, and daughters Beba, Daniela, Daiana and Camila.
They are a very close family, and were very happy to share what little they have with us volunteers.

I have been working with a number of different people from team GB, but latterly with Rob and Jas. Our task was to construct internal walls to create a bathroom, using the lightweight ‘honeycomb’ bricks commonly used in Argentina. We had to mix the mortar by hand in buckets, and I assisted Habitat for Humanity’s technical advisor, Hernán, in setting out the walls.

The mortar mix differed for the bottom 2 courses, with more cement included in that mix. The walls are built directly off the concrete floor slabs, which are far from level, and I had to use my ‘architect’s eye’ quite a lot for judging the level and straightness of the walls as we did not have such luxuries as spirit levels. That is why there are quite a few pictures of me ‘squinting’ at the wall!

Understandably Tito, like many of La Matanza’s residents, needs his materials to stretch far and nothing is wasted. Mortar was scrapped off the floor for re-use, and we made our best attempts at hand cutting the bricks to achieve cuts for the stretcher bond of the wall.

The work got hotter and slower the higher the wall went. The heat of the sun on the crinkly tin meant that the underside of the roof became unbearable hot, and the house had minimal ventilation making it very stuffy. After a day of balancing on plastic crates we were able to borrow a pair of step ladders from Concordia which certainly helped. After 5 days of building we finished our task and completed the wall – with Rob having to finish off the highest course due to mine and Jas’s lack of stature!
Hopefully we have given Tito a good start towards completing his bathroom. He and his family certainly seemed very grateful for our assistance and also the opportunity to meet people from abroad.

Hernán and his assistant were very impressed with the work of 'las chicas', bricklaying being regarded as a male task up to now. But our efforts have persuaded them that  they should train females for bricklaying tasks in the future!

[Nicola and Tito]

See also:

A brick wall, yellow paint and a concrete column

A higher wall, more yellow paint and a bedroom extension

Nicola & Brian work together on Tito's wall

Nicola & Brian at Tito's House

Day 10 at Tito's House in Pictures

A few days after working at the House of Maria and Germán we walked past there on the way to work at Miguel's. It was good to see that the work that we had started was being continued by Germán. He had told us that our help had accomplished in one afternoon what would have taken him several days to do on his own. We had brought the column to support a water tank (on the left of the picture below) up to roof level in concrete. Germán had, over the weekend, built up the wooden supports to the full level required. He now awaited a delivery of materials to enable him to finish pouring the concrete and complete the tower.

We had been told that one of the benefits in us working in the 22 de Enero Neighbourhood would be to give the people we were helping a hand up and help push them forward in completing their ongoing building work. Here was evidence of that in a matter of just a few days.

You can give people like Germán a hand up by donating at www.justgiving.com/argentina2009

Read: Moving Rubble

Our last day of the Global Village Challenge (Day 12) saw Nicola finishing Tito's wall whilst I joined Joe, Emily and Trevor at the house of Antoñin & Ismel. There our task was moving rubble from on top of a roof to the ground. This was then going to be broken up for use in hardcore. We were not sure how or why it was on a roof but anyway with buckets, ropes and shovels we set to our task. The hardcore is required to raise the level of the floor of their existing house as they have a flooding problem.

Antoñin oversaw progress and provided cold Mate. We were visited by a Nun and her friend who broke into a round of applause for our efforts.

See also: Day 12 at Antoñin's House in Pictures

Read: Moving earth

Read: "If all the world would help like you all the world would be better"