Planning for the Big Construction

The lobster house workshop is less than a week away and the days are getting more stressful as the big days approach. It has been raining all week and doesn't show signs of stopping anytime soon.

This morning it took me two hours to print off the avisos we are going to hang up at the pescaderias and the beaches where the fishermen bring in their catch. The avisos tell the fishermen not to fish inside an area marked with red buoys because it is part of a scientific study. We have the support of CODOPESCA, SEMARENA, and the Marina de Guerra, so if anyone sees someone disturbing the houses, they are to call the numbers on the flyer. The first time I went to print out the avisos, PyP, the business that we also buy our wireless from, was closed. The second time they had run out of yellow ink and said that they wouldn't be able to get more ink until Monday or Tuesday. The aviso still prints in color and the red shows up, which is the most important component, but it looks weird. After consulting with Darien, we decided to go with the aviso in color over the black and white.

We've bargained with a local welder named Ale to weld the frames together before the workshop so that they will be ready. He started off asking for 500 pesos per house but we were able to get it down to 300 pesos per house, which is still a lot of money at $US 166. Today we are hopefully going to buy the materials and bring them to his house. I went to the ferreteria at 1 but it was closed like all of the other businesses in Miches for the lunch hour (12-2). So I'm going to have to go try again. Hopefully, they are open tomorrow as well, or else we are going to have to buy all of the materials today and bring them to Frank's house. Hopefully the rain will cease by then because I don't think concrete likes getting wet.

Frank is the fisherman who is going to monitor the lobster houses for me. He is going to get possession of the lobster houses when the project is over and will be able to collect the legally harvestable lobsters from the houses during the project while he's collecting the data. He is the one who rents all of the fishing equipment to the majority of the fishermen of los Mameyes, hopefully out of respect for him and the chance that they might receive lobster houses of their own from the project if they are successful, they won't disturb the lobster houses. Frank also owns a bar where the lobster information session will be held and we are going to construct the houses on top of his roof.

Yesterday I went to the beach with Darien and Coral to collect bottle caps to help distinguish the houses from each other. Six bottlecaps will be placed into the concrete while it's drying and have a pattern of one or two different colors. I never realized how many different colored bottlecaps there are but there are enough for 20 different color combinations, enough for our 20 houses! We got three fishermen from the beach located by the basketball field to help us. They were part of the fishermen's group headed by Pompilio. Last year Pompilio fished for lobsters but this year he stopped. I still have to ask Carlos why that is...