Construction

Our little casa/cabina is coming along nicely, although this seems the strangest construction process ever. Carlos, the coffee farmer turned contractor, is a cheerful person with a broad smile and steady, patient demeanor. The remainder of the crew consists of 28-year-old Alejandro, whose visa hearing is coming up soon for his hoped-for return to the U.S. where his family awaits, and Jose, a 21-year old teacher of las matematicas who is in between assigned schools. We have become friends with all of them.

Each morning Carlos drives his rickety, aged pickup to the job site from our village, surely pleased that it has made the trip one more day. Alejandro and Carlos arrive on dirt bikes, coming from several miles away. We generally walk down to our finca in the mornings, where the construction crew stops work for a few minutes to chat. They are proud of their work and each day we’re amazed at how much has been accomplished. I wonder how a farmer, a former U.S. grocery store worker and a teacher know how to build a casa.

Structural support consists of baldosas for the walls. These meter-sized concrete panels are held in place by cement columns and inserted in place much like flat building blocks. Typical Tico houses are built either from cinder blocks or baldosas, then stucco-ed over. We have seen no trailers or pre-fab houses in this country; the only exception to concrete being wood, which is more expensive. Stucco will cover our casa’s exterior walls and wood and bamboo will be used inside.

Carlos is the master welder and has spent many days perched high in the air on the metal framework, carefully cutting and welding pieces together to make a complex hip-style roof that rises 15-ft. from the future living room floor. This, too, will be covered with wood. The floor is built after the walls and roof are completed. Trees that were cleared for our building site have been cut into neat posts for the porches. The crew’s machetes have trimmed away the bark.

We are paying $2.50 to $3 per hour, which is on the high side for workers in this area. We intend a bonus for each when their work is done for this year. Carlos comes to work in raggedy clothes and his beat-up shoes look too large. He wears no socks. His coffee farm provides income for his family to get by, but this construction job has helped considerably.

For construction we purchased a generator, a ladder and some hand tools. What tools the crew is missing, they go without and improvise. They ask us for nothing. Carlos is studying English via a CD and we try to help each other learn our respective languages. Jose laments his girlfriend having moved to Spain and is earnestly seeking a teaching position so that he can save money to visit her and seek her father’s permission for them to marry. Alejandro becomes tearful, telling us of his deportation by Immigration after 10 years in the U.S. I wish to save money in the U.S. in order to help Carlos and his family each year. I wish to secure a safe place for Alejandro and his family and to help Jose reach his dreams.

The long arm of the bureaucratic Municipalidad has stepped in to demand that we hire an engineer for the necessary processing of our many building permits. This is a major setback as between engineer and permits there is now an additional cost of $1,800US. The work continues nonetheless.

Pecos and I traveled to Municipalidad headquarters in San Isidro to begin unraveling the permit process. We were first referred to an engineer who speaks English. Directions to the office were 300 metres past the bibiloteca (library) as there are no street addresses in this city. This interesting firm of a father and two sons seemed more art gallery than engineering company, and Salvador Dali was favored most. They had never heard of our village and were unfamiliar with the process as it applies to the most remote areas. They seemed in no hurry to work and we spent a pleasant hour admiring their art and discussing music.

Carlos knew of a woman engineer who has done work in this area. We agreed to have her come to the house site. She was very loud and officious, ordering our gentle crew around and firing questions nonstop. She would not give us a price for her services but insisted on taking all of our paperwork with her for review – including the certified copy of our corporation. We made an appointment for a few days later to meet in San Isidro at a restaurant.

For this meeting, we brought The Kid to serve as our interpreter, and the engineer brought her English-speaking son as well. We negotiated every permit and its process, every detail of construction, every itemized cost. I did not want to work with this woman unless she gave a little, and she would not budge. We would have to find another engineer, I told her. We are free to do so and good luck to us, she responded. Pecos, The Kid and her son tried to intervene but their mothers halted their every attempt. ‘No!’ is a word understood in all languages.

I turned to her son and told him his ma-ma’ is muy fuerte – strong, like a force. She burst out laughing and said I am the same. She suddenly agreed to drop her price and meet our expectations and I acquiesced on a few of her points. As the males at our table shook their heads, she and I exchanged information. Cinco ninos, she proudly told me. Yo? Seis, I informed her. Nietos, she asked? Cinco, I said. Ah ha, ocho!, she exclaimed, having more grandchildren than me. Florice de Lis said she was the first woman architect certified by the Costa Rican government. She will serve us well. We signed her contract and she immediately began processing our permits for design, construction, electricity, water, land use, safety and health, some of which have to be sent to distant San Jose for review.

I think of our Wheeler County courthouse and how it offers one-stop shopping for all kinds of formal documents. In Costa Rica here are different offices for any type of formal document. At each office one picks up the necessary document and then takes it to the stamp office, which is literally a place that sells stamps (the old-fashioned licking kind) for any need. The stamps and documents are then carried to the filing office – different locations, depending on which type of document one is working with, and again without street addresses – where everything is looked over and the stamps are affixed. Having a paper with stamps is equivalent to having a certified copy in the U.S.

Our little casa will not be completed by the time that I depart this country in a few weeks, and perhaps not by the time Pecos leaves in mid-April. Electricity and water will come later and a small storage shed must be built this year. We trust Carlos to carry on. Marcos, caretaker for my kids’ finca de familia, tells us he will take care of our planting and maintaining our finca while we’re in the U.S. and that we can settle up later, after our casa is completed. Carlos’s brother Francisco, our closest neighbor, will also oversee our property while we are will gone. Our Tico friends are grateful for this work and we are thankful in return.