More problems and more blocos

Now that the mestres had the blocos, one would think that they wouldn’t waste any time beginning the construction of the house. How wrong we were! The walls went up slowly, and the mestres found a new reason not to work every day. They took three-hour lunch breaks until we agreed to provide food on site. They couldn’t work because they didn’t want to mix cement, so we paid an extra person to mix cement. They didn’t work because they didn’t have materials, despite having told us the previous evening that they had everything they needed. They didn’t want to work because it was too difficult with blocos queimados. They couldn’t work because the blocos were too far away, so we paid sixteen children to carry blocos 10 metres to the mestres. They didn’t turn up to work because of the rain. They didn’t want to work because it was too hot. They didn’t want to work because they wanted more money. Basically, they didn’t want to work. They were very good at stealing cement, causing problems, asking for money and making our lives miserable.

We had a couple of other adventures, such as going to buy sand and stones, but apart from the initial stress of finding a car and agreeing a price, none were as traumatic as the blocos.

So, you can imagine our distress when we discovered that we needed to buy another 650. Instead of heading back to the original place, which we hope never to see again, we found some more, a mere 200 metres from the house. We arranged to meet the owners at 5a.m. where we would find the 650 blocos already counted. Sound familiar?

At 5a.m. the blocos had not been counted and the owners were no-where to be found. We found a truck, which needed a push to get started, and set off with eight boys to load up the blocos. Now that we had mastered the art, it only took us an hour. The only minor problem was push-starting a car, weighed down by bricks, in a muddy field. Twenty men pushed while a pick-up truck pulled, which snapped three ropes and moved the car 5 metres into a rut. We, with the help of seven other women, two with babies on their backs, unloaded 450 blocos and managed to start the truck, which disappeared for three hours, with 200 blocos and 200MTn of our money. By nightfall, all 650 were duly delivered to the house, even though a third had been broken and our finger prints had disappeared once more.

Two days later the inside walls were finished, despite having a momentary panic when we were told that there weren’t enough blocos. We frantically ran around the garden finding seventy-five nearly whole ones and told the mestres they would have to make do.

Everything then ground to a halt. To cut another long story short, the mestres, mainly João, decided that we had cheated them out of money – they said the demolition was an extra 1000MTn (£20/2500ISK) despite the contract clearly stating it was part of the initial sum agreed. They also decided that the roof was not included in the construction of the house, despite having spoken to us at length about what materials they needed and how they were going to do it. There was lots of shouting, tears on both our parts, some of the staff from ActionAid were called to help resolve the issue. The contract was waved in João’s face, who laughed and refused to listen to reason. We decided to fire João and keep the other two mestres, who would divide the remaining 50% of the money.