Friday, April 01, 2005
Solomon´s Porch week
I just finished up a delightful week with Solomon´s porch in San Juan. The week was spent building 5 houses, 1 latrine, and painting a basketball court. Here are the events of the weekend.
-We arrive and tour the town, looking at the locations for the future houses.
-We discover that the houses have pretty much been built already by the workers...some of them only need a roof (basically, the masons had agreed to work this week (a holiday week for them), but then decided that they would not work this week, and then went on to leave very little work for us to do).
-Dustin figured out other work for us to do on the fly.
-the beds had bugs in them. there were some days where all i wanted to do was just sit at home and itch my legs. all day long.
-I arrive at a house to work, and am informed that they need sand. We all climb into a half dead pickup truck, and are carted off to the mountain, where we hack at the sides of it to make sandstone into sand. Then we load it into huge bags, throw the bags on our back, and then climb down the near cliffs to the pickup...the pickup was pretty much dragging on the ground on the way back.....and we had to all get out so it could make it up a hill...
here were incredible processions in the town that night. the streets were completely covered with continuous colorful sawdust carpets.
-I went and saw my old house I had built. It was amazing. Juan, my buddy from that house has moved to Guatemala city at age 14, and now sells pants there to support his family. He´s a great kid. Also, his little brother oscar, who was VERY sick last year, is doing great. I honestly think that had not someone from the last trip provided him with medicine he would be dead now.
-the families were incredibly greatful for the houses. Many tears. a very touching goodbye.
-Saturday we went swimming...on a beach of mud. I have never seen so many guatemalans...We were definately the only gringos there.
-Also saturday, I went to a showing of the Guatemala vs. Trinidad World Cup game. It was insane. There were sombereos thrown in the air with every goal. U.S. plays Guatemala tomorrow. They take thier soccer VERY seriously here, so if anyone asks you, I´m Canadian tomorrow.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the guy my group (3 people) built house for makes a whopping 4 bucks a day. Which wouldn´t be so bad if he didn´t have EIGHT kids.
-We arrive and tour the town, looking at the locations for the future houses.
-We discover that the houses have pretty much been built already by the workers...some of them only need a roof (basically, the masons had agreed to work this week (a holiday week for them), but then decided that they would not work this week, and then went on to leave very little work for us to do).
-Dustin figured out other work for us to do on the fly.
-the beds had bugs in them. there were some days where all i wanted to do was just sit at home and itch my legs. all day long.
-I arrive at a house to work, and am informed that they need sand. We all climb into a half dead pickup truck, and are carted off to the mountain, where we hack at the sides of it to make sandstone into sand. Then we load it into huge bags, throw the bags on our back, and then climb down the near cliffs to the pickup...the pickup was pretty much dragging on the ground on the way back.....and we had to all get out so it could make it up a hill...
here were incredible processions in the town that night. the streets were completely covered with continuous colorful sawdust carpets.
-I went and saw my old house I had built. It was amazing. Juan, my buddy from that house has moved to Guatemala city at age 14, and now sells pants there to support his family. He´s a great kid. Also, his little brother oscar, who was VERY sick last year, is doing great. I honestly think that had not someone from the last trip provided him with medicine he would be dead now.
-the families were incredibly greatful for the houses. Many tears. a very touching goodbye.
-Saturday we went swimming...on a beach of mud. I have never seen so many guatemalans...We were definately the only gringos there.
-Also saturday, I went to a showing of the Guatemala vs. Trinidad World Cup game. It was insane. There were sombereos thrown in the air with every goal. U.S. plays Guatemala tomorrow. They take thier soccer VERY seriously here, so if anyone asks you, I´m Canadian tomorrow.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the guy my group (3 people) built house for makes a whopping 4 bucks a day. Which wouldn´t be so bad if he didn´t have EIGHT kids.
I also forgot to mention that miraculously, NO ONE got sick (for very long).
