Catemu Project Well On Its Way!

The Catemu House Project is well on its way thanks to the generous donations make by Assumption Greek Orthodox Church and the anonymous donation we have received here in Chile. We are more than half way to our goal, and the construction date is coming up very quickly!

Here is what we have been doing in the last week:

Christian drew up the plans. He met with the city government of Catemu and turned in the official copy of the house plans to be approved by the powers that be. We should hear back from them on Monday. We also talked to a maestro (a construction worker) who came highly recommended in Catemu to lead the project. We are waiting for him to give us an estimate on how much he will charge to work on the house. We need to have one paid worker to insure that everyone is working safely and doing the job correctly.

Work on demolishing the remaining structure has already begun. We were a little nervous about this part. We were worried that we had to rent a combo (a big huge truck), pay a driver, and pay a dumping permit for all the remains of the house. This would totally blow our budget, however we talked to the city and they said that if we got it all done within 7 days of yesterday, they would haul all the junk away. We said to ourselves, 7 days oh my gosh it will never get done. The family doesn´t have a phone so we went running to Catemu to inform the family that all the entire structure had to be torn down (including the two brick rooms that they´re living in) or the project would die by the beginning of next week. Guillermo very calmly told me that he would have it done ALL BY HIMSELF by Tuesday. I was so amazed. Remember that his man works from sun up to sun down as a gardener, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will be done when he said it will be done. His wife and three children are going to live with his mother, and he is staying on the property to guard the fortress.

We also have been working on recruiting volunteers and making arrangement to get them working. We have 13 volunteers so far. Because Catemu is so far away, we are planning on staying at a campsite near Catemu to save money on transportation. I have talked to a place that has been very slow to respond, so I am looking into other options. We also have found someone who will make home cooked Chilean lunches for the volunteers for less than two dollars. For those of you that have never eaten a traditional Chilean lunch, they are delicious and huge. Chilean people know how to eat.

This is our list of things to do before we can begin to build:

1. Talk the city into giving us a building permit for free (when my mother-in-law heard that they wanted to charge us $150 for it she told us not to worry, she is going to go reprimand the mayor and get it for free)

2. Get the bid from the construction worker

3. Try to get the Chilean IRS not to charge us the 34% tax that new constructions have to pay (that will be an entire day of fun, take me work for it)

4. Buy the materials (everything that we will use for the structure of the house)

5. Rent a cement mixer

6. Stake out the property

7. Get our volunteers to Catemu

8. Go to town working

9. …and then of course continue getting donation

We now have paypal up and running, so if you want to make a donation, go to our website www.viviendapasiva.cl