A Visit to the Sustainable House

Remember this?

That's two posts in a row starting with the same question; I'm doing a lot of remembering these days; bear with me.

This is the Kichwa / Peace Corps Sustainable House many of you supported through donations last year.  Some fellow PCVs and I teamed up with an indigenous community high in the Andean Cotopaxi region to build a sustainable house.  The village will use it to house guests and tourists, and then otherwise as they see fit. 

The structure itself has been finished for months, and since some of us PCVs hadn't seen it, we figured it was time to put the house to the test and sleep in it.  Good news: we survived (huzzah!), and the house did not collapse.


...Of course it didn't; part of what makes the house sustainable is that we used local materials and traditional building techniques (i.e., the villagers knew exactly what they were doing) in combination with some more innovative approaches (e.g., the heat retaining bottle wall).

These two showed us around and explained what was what, from the foundation to the roof.  They and the other villagers were extremely excited to show off everything they'd accomplished--and also anxious to make us feel at home.  After taking us on a tour of the mountainside and the village, they fed us and tucked us into bed, piling on blanket after blanket until we could hardly move.  Good luck if you have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

A Room With A View!

There are still a couple finishing touches to be put on that will make the house 100% spiffy, but I am happy to report that our night there was highly satisfactory, due as much to the hospitality of the community and the beauty of the scenery as to the comfort of the house itself.

Thanks again for your support on this project!