The team

Here are the first pictures of the team that's building our house, taken at the plot a couple of days ago while we were having lunch. The builders brought salads, risotto, bread and sausages, and of course, some wine!

Juantxo is the mason (Steinmetz) and Mustafa his assistant. Joseba is the carpenter (Schreiner) and Osvaldo one of his assistants. Juantxo (behind Edorta) and Joseba (beard) are brothers and together run a small company called B.O.Z., specialized in bio-architecture and traditional ways of building. For some strange reason, Joseba insists on calling his brother "gordo" (fat man) - not as if you'd see much of a difference between the two...

For those of you who don't know what Juantxo and me are using to drink wine, it is called bota (zahatoa, in basque). It's a traditional handicrafted container made of goat skin, generally used to carry and drink wine. In one one of the links you can watch a video of how they make them.

Osvaldo, one of the assistants, is from South America, the other one, Mustafa, is from Algier. He's been with the brothers for more than 8 years. As a practicing muslim, he's the one who prays to Mekka in our unfinished house at lunchtime - as you see we get all the help we could ask for!