Construction Update

This picture above shows the newest and most visible change to the property — we’ve got part of the fence started along the road.  The fence will go up three blocks like this, then have 5-6 feet of chain link, topped with barbed wire.  Security it important when you’re taking care of children, so we want to do it right.

The other big news is that we’ve got the foundation dug for the second house now!  Our workers think they can have the foundation poured by the end of next week. 

Also on the above photo you can see the power line coming down from the electric pole, connected to our meter.  This wire runs underground, bringing lights to the current house, power to our welder, and is ready to be connected to the first house.

 The water is running strong now.  The 600 gallon tank up the mountain is doing its job and we have tremendous water pressure.

Another thing we’ve accomplished is that we’ve got the walls up for the office, located at the very left in the top picture.  I’ll add another picture of it below.

Things are moving faster now that we have more workers.  We are currently employing two cement workers, two agricultural workers, and three helpers for them.  On Saturdays we work a half day and generally add a few students from Instituto el Rey to our workforce. 

The thing that’s still been slowing us down are roofs.  We’ve waited for the first house for kids to get a roof for over a month now.  The office and our storage shed are sitting ready for a roof too.  We’ve got the machine to weld and the electricity to do it, but we’re still lacking the man-power.  One of these days…

Overall though, we’ve been flying through everything.  When I stop and think that we just began the construction in March, I’m happily surprised at all we’ve accomplished in just a few months.

Paco the New Mascot

Give Hope 2 Kids has a new pet.  It’s called a kinkachoo, which is a nocturnal, fruit-eating animal here in the jungle.  People here call it a night-monkey.  It’s somewhere between a monkey and a racoon and is also called a honey-bear.  It can hang from it’s tail, is a very good climber, and goes bananas for bananas, but doesn’t much appreciate being woken up during the day.