Accidental Tourist: Ooging it out in rural Ecuador

A blue collar dream collides with the real world

This had been the plan from the start. Get to South America, survive as long as possible on our meagre savings, then find work. As it stood, sand fleas feasting on my raw ankles, mixing mud and straw on a building site in rural Ecuador, I battled to find anyone to blame.

"Here's an Italian couple that need help building a 'cob house' in Ecuador," Andy offers, as he peruses the volunteer tourism site. Since my days as a young Jew growing up in the suburbs of Joburg, I've harboured a deep desire to fight the trappings of a commerce degree, the futility of academia, instead seeking a level of fulfilment that - to a young boy watching as overall-clad men placed brick on mortar (we were renovating our kitchen) - seemed to come only from a day of honest construction.

Lacking in fine motor coordination and having an aversion to physical exertion, I fostered this ambition amid scepticism from friends and family. With my blue-collar dreams within reach, my reply to Andy was emphatic: "Let's go build a damn cob house."

"Hand me a fatty. And three rocks." I'm horizontal on a cement roof, sun beating down on my exposed drumstick legs, plugging thick bamboo rafters with cob balls and rocks. We're trying to stop anything from nesting here, which could cause the cement roof to collapse.

Cob is essentially the stuff most houses in the Transkei are made of - mud and straw. Take the basic premise of environmentally conscious building practice, apply all the Western trappings, and you'll be somewhere close to what we're doing on this roof, plugging bamboo with mud.

Our hosts, Francesco and Cecilia, are the epitome of the well intentioned. Dreaming of living an environmentally sustainable life off the grid, they chose cob as an alternative. We arrive late into the construction, the roof is already up and only a few interior cob walls are left to make. Progress is impressive. Using cob, bamboo and only in the most necessary cases cement, the construction is beginning to resemble a house.

Precariously placing a final cob ball, I fear the worst. "Looks like you got some major ooging going on." Andy jabs at the breadloaf of a wall I've managed to create. Syntactically correct, "ooging" is the term used for a wall sagging under the weight of too much fresh cob. Despite the scale of the project, our Italian earth warriors have avoided using anything that could harm the environment, meaning: hand-built walls with no formwork.

Francesco likes curved lines. In fact, the entire house, all two storeys of it, barely has a straight line. "There are no straight lines in nature. It's unnatural to live in a square house." Francesco elucidates on his building philosophy. Andy and Leon hold back tears from biting their tongues. As architects, the house is an affront to their sensibilities.

Cobbing progresses slowly. Centimetre by centimetre, halting as soon as there's ooging. This explains the length of the project, and we develop a new-found sympathy for the Ecuadorian building crew who are becoming tired of building what is essentially a giant mud castle for these gringos. While nobly intentioned, saving on all the extra wood required for construction, it would be easier if the house was a typical one-bedroom cob house. Instead, the Italians have us building an eco-villa. As my companions reason: "If your house wants to be a house, let it be a house."

My people are not cut out for this work. A week in, scabbed hands and a growing hatred towards hoes (the wooden-handled variety), I'm ready to remove my blue collar. With so much pseudo-hippie sentiment shoved in your face, I can appreciate our hosts' genuine effort. Painfully sticking to their convictions, perhaps they've actually got it right. If only getting it right didn't have to be such a pain in the ass.