Before the sacks:
The chapel-school walls consisted of empty space and a few pieces of zinc roofing. The wooden support beams formed a fragile system unable to withstand winds above 20 mph. So on the day we started to move the sacks, the men first removed the zinc siding and then began to place the sacks.
Planned messiness:
One of our fundamental goals is to introduce a practice that the people can repeat on their own. But since it is a new practice, there is bound to be messiness in the way the men lay the sacks. In order to offset this drawback we use large sacks of between 100 and 125 pounds. Do we increase the messy factor by using larger sacks? Perhaps. We need more knowledge in order to do the calculations. At any rate, in the above pictures you can see people moving 342 heavy sacks in just one day. The major incentive for the demanding work was payment of 20 pesos for each sack filled and tied off. That comes out to $.60 cents for each sack.
Ease of operation:
Because we will continue to use the zinc roof, the community of La Vibora had no trouble catching on to the art of sack placement. They seem confident enough to continue filling more sacks and moving the project foreword. Our major limitation is a lack of sensitivity and familiarity with the inner workings of the Haitian culture. Are the people really fascinated by this construction method? Do they really believe it has value for their life situation? To what degree is the reception of this technique dependent upon factors we are not aware of? These are but a few of the questions that lead us to walk softly into this project.
