Slum-Building Day 1

Fantasy Saves Planning

The shock of hearing that we are going to build a slum on the campus was nothing compared to the thought of staying there for one night, living on the (generous) 10 euro a day, including building materials.

Writing about such shock makes me feel spoilt, especially as we didn’t have to beg or find work as well. Also we had an abundance of material from the construction yard and the basement (not allowed, but that’s the nature of this experience).

The 10 euro a day thing was ok for 1 day (Aldi received good business), and scavenging for tit bits of food/building material makes you think laterally about everyday things. You begin thinking about how to exploit the weaknesses that the order of society displays to you. Although this sort of scavenging was enjoyable for one day, it takes up a lot of time that you would like to spend getting work done, or recreation (a luxury that a lot of people mightn’t have the time for).

Organization was a mess for the 37 people in the class, and the language barrier just made everything so slow. Not that any of this talking really got us anywhere in the end. Deciding the site, and the lengthy process of dividing people up into groups of 5 was the only useful outcome of a couple of hour’s work. Efficient discussion can never happen when 37 people are involved. It became easier, and calmer with 5 people. We agreed on things quicker, and our group seemed to always be on the same page.

The real work began when you set out scavenging for materials. After exploiting the lack of security of the construction site and experiencing ‘the man’ (a.k.a. the college security in the basement), our group sized up the members of our shelter (metal fences, wooden boards). It was then that we could have an idea about what we were going to build. Simple geometry and concept was what everybody had in mind.