A guard lives on our terrain

Last weekend, the construction workers removed the last rubble from our terrain. After 5 weeks of demolishing (all done by hand by these incredibly strong guys), we asked the municipality for a permit to remove the growing mountain of bricks, iron and cement that was arising.

This work has to be done at night, since there is so much traffic in the day in Oaxaca, that there is no space for trucks to park on the street and load the cargo. They gave us the permit, allowing us (well, them) to work three nights in a row from 10 pm – 5 am to load the trucks and take the rubble out.

Five guys are working on our terrain, six days a week, under the guidance of foreman Don Andrés. No wait, there are six guys, because we also have the velador Juan, the guard that moved into the front room by the street, and that is watching over our property. This to us at first, was a very weird concept, to have someone you don’t know living on your empty lot, without water, electricity or even a matress to sleep on! But soon we understood this is pretty normal here. You need someone to prevent robbery of the work tools, or people breaking in at night trying to steel materials.

So our architect arranged a big tinaco (a water tank), tapped an electricity wire from the public power grid (yup, also normal) and now Juan is there, all the time. Until we finish construction. He’s happy, because he has a job. And we are happy that he’s there, our velador.