Circumambulating Brazil: Obrigatório o uso de capacete no canteiro de obras

When Otilia isn’t working at the family business, running her own clinic, opening/maintaining her apartment for need greaters she volunteers with 1 of the 2 assembly hall construction crews that tour Brazil. She was kind enough to invite us to spend the day with her there. We sorta made a girls day of it with Tamara and Juliany, sisters from the Manaus English group. On the way home we listened to the local radio station that plays Lykee Li remixed on what can only be described as a loop and let the thick air from all our car windows down dry our sweat.

Temporary apartments are built for the construction group. There are apartments for couples and for singles. Each couple gets their own apartment or 3 single brothers or 3 sisters per apartment. When the build is completed these get demolished.

Laundry department

Commissary

The dinning room doubles as a Kingdom Hall

Regina and her husband are accomplished retired biologists that serve in the Creole congregation of Manaus. Their job is to grow and maintain local plant life that will be used in the landscape of the assembly hall. The brothers have put a special effort in not only using native plants in the planning but clearing as few coconut trees as possible.

Stephanie, Tamara, Cynt, me.
Behind us the open air assembly hall that will seat close to 2,000

The plans only include one partial wall in the stage area.

Arturo, Fabio, Edison, Me, Bob the Builder

There are only 2 ways in and out of Manaus, by plane or boat. All building materials had to be shipped on the Amazon river. Because of this fact many projects that are usually outsourced had to be done by the construction crew. This water tower is the first to be constructed by a construction crew. The crew also travels with its own concrete mixer, VW Bus fleet, tools and machinery.