Kingston Group Bridges Borders to Build Homes for Poor Families
by Stephen Siegfried, Silver City Daily Press, February 15, 2003
"I'm practicing the right livelihood for the first time in my life," says Kingston resident Owen Geiger, who works for an international non-profit network called Builders Without Borders. "I'm doing the best thing I could do with my life. This is what I'm best at."
Geiger, 46, is seated on an upside-down 5-gallon bucket, talking about building low-cost, strawbale homes for poor families in Mexico, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Africa, the United States and anywhere else they're needed.
"We use available, energy-saving, minimally-processed materials. There is far less energy used in manufacturing the product, fewer transportation costs, and virtually no packaging waste." The result, Geiger says, is low-cost, sensible, energy-efficient homes.
"I know the families who live in them will be warm the rest of their lives. They'll save on their heating and energy costs. They'll conserve energy for their ancestors, and anyone else who comes after them. They'll have a better chance at life."
An engineer, Geiger says the international non-profit group was begun in 1999. The organization not only builds homes, it trains indigent people in construction trades across four continents.
"There are people in Juarez working in maquila sweatshops for a dollar a day. Sure, there are jobs. But they don't pay enough money to live on. People need the kinds of skills that will let them make a living wage. Nothing less."
"We just don't go to other countries to build houses. That's not enough. We're going there so the people can help themselves," Geiger said.
Anapra, Chihuahua, Mexico, is a barrio on the northwestern border of Juarez. It is where Builders Without Borders, in partnership with Casas de la Cruz of Kansas City, Mo., will build the first of three strawbale houses, each one in about two weeks. BWB staffers will provide technical support and design in addition to participating in the actual construction.
Alfred von Bachmayr, a Santa Fe architect, is one of the founders of BWB. He has worked on building projects in Anapra in the past.
"We build sustainable homes with indigenous, highly insular materials that are available in the area and suited to the environment," von Bachmayr said. Houses are oriented to make use of passive solar heat and seasonal shading.
Asked why he became involved with BWB, the residential architect said it was "for the personal satisfaction of seeing people in a wonderful new home, and for me to have a little peace in knowing I had something to do with that."
What more is there to say about the houses being built in Anapra?
"Instead of giving assistance only once," Geiger said, referring to building workshops for community residents and volunteers, "what of the other, the bigger picture of teaching people a livelihood while saving the planet's rainforests and air and the water and a lot of other resources?"
"We try to adapt what we're doing to the climate, the local culture - 'vernacular architecture' it's called. We try to mesh with what they're doing, and what skills they have," Geiger said.
Geiger credits the experience of building homes with Habitat for Humanity with taking him away from building contract houses he didn't believe in.
"Habitat is great, but that was only on weekends. I was doing stuff through the week, contracting, building homes that made no sense. This is full-time, and we'll work anywhere they'll allow us where there are poor people without homes."
He contrasts homes built by Builders Without Borders with the typical American home, viewing the impact of the BWB initiative on an almost planetary scale.
"(American homeowners) get a beautiful home that there's a dark side to. We are," Geiger says, shaking his head, "destroying the environment on a massive scale when we build wasteful homes with plastic and synthetics and with wood from clearcut forests."
"Have you been to Canada? I have. It's out of sight," he says, in regard to logging practices.
And out of sight is where Geiger believes the great American homebuilder puts the cost of a house in terms of cost to the planet.
"Do you know how much energy it takes to make synthetic carpet? Do you know what it does to the air?" He answers the first, but leaves the second hanging.
Most recently, BWB applied to the U.S.-Afghanistan Reconstruction Council to build houses for Afghans whose homes have been turned to rubble during recent bombing of that country by U.S. and U.N. Coalition forces.
Catherine Wanek, a Kingston resident and filmmaker, and one of the BWB founders, said putting together an instructional video for Afghans is complicated by the multiple languages and dialects of the country.
"The concept is to use native Afghans as teachers in the film," Wanek said. "Our philosophy is that the indigenous peoples of a region themselves are featured in the (instructional) videos - those men and women we can find who are natural actors will be used to convey the information. Our solution to home building in other countries is to have a cadre of native people showing their fellow countrymen and women techniques of construction that are not Western solutions, but consistent with their needs and culture."
Wanek and Geiger say survivors of bombed-out countries like Afghanistan make a case for straw-bale construction that would seem to turn the tale of the three little pigs on its ear.
"There are 50 million acres in wheat, barley and rice in the countries surrounding Afghanistan," Geiger said.
"All three crops produce straw. Many Afghans don't want any more adobe or stone homes. They know war. They know of too many people killed by falling bricks and mortar from bombs."
According to Wanek, a plastered strawbale house withstood simulated winds at well over 100 mph during a test in Albuquerque.
"A school built in a seismic region of China withstood an earthquake that registered 6.2 on the Richter scale with only a minor crack in the plaster," Wanek said.
The Anapra project is scheduled to begin March 8. Volunteers are needed to work on the project itself. Others interested in gathering experience to become trainers for future domestic and international projects are also needed.
For more information about Builders Without Borders, call (505) 895-5400, visit the organization's Web site at www.BuildersWithoutBorders.org, or write Builders Without Borders, 119 Main St., Kingston, NM 88042.
BWB is an international network of ecological builders working together for a sustainable future.