Megan and the Last Full Build Day

Content by Megan

"Te amo, Maggie! Te amo..." This sentence means "I love you". This is how Timoteo greeted me this morning after wrapping me up into a bear hug. I blushed and he kissed my cheek. "Gracias, te amo!" is how I reply. I have worked along side Timo for four straight days. He has watched me dig the endless pile of dirt, get a horrible sunburn, be covered in concrete, laugh, cry and push harder than I ever have in my life. We laugh and tell stories about our very different lives. No matter the language barrier we still find a way to connect. Everyday we play a game that my mother taught me. We sit down and say "something good. Something bad and something we learned". I have played this game my entire life at dinner time. Now my entire Habitat team and this amazing family from Guatemala, also plays with me, everyday. I have to thank my mother again. My highlight for today was the best coffee that I have ever tasted in my life!! We all sat down, played my game and drank coffee. I am here and I really am making a difference.

We have also become very close with the family next door. Jan, Sonja, Anna, Julio and Gregorio are the children that fill my days with laughter. I teach them bits of English and they love riding in the wheel barrel, although my back says "No! Stop!", I wave my hand and they pile in to have me push them up the hill again. I do this 70 times and each time, the laugh like it's the first. Anna kisses me and points at my sunglasses, "Maggie! Maggie!", she jumps around and slides them over her face. We laugh and tickle each other. Sonja stands to the outside of the group. She is very sick. She has missed four days of school and did not come out of the house, until today. Her mother keeps her inside, in bed next to the wood stove. The wood stove that is not vented outside. She smells of damp smoke. She coughs, and shivers. Her nose is constantly running. I call her over and she hugs me, "Ola Maggie!" she says and leans her head to my chest. I do not care that this child is dirty or sick, I just care that she gets better. I wipe her face and she smiles. I do not want to leave these families and go back to my life. I want to stay here and continue to make a difference in their lives. No matter the troubles, the illness, or the poverty, they find a way to laugh with me. Everyday, we laugh.

I come back to the hotel and my entire group from Habitat is becoming more like a family everyday. We walk around the market and connect with the locals. I make a trip to the pharmacy and find that their security system is ....

As I am sitting here, writing this blog, an earthquake just shook me like a rag doll, reminding me I am far from home. The lights flashed and the lamp above my danced in the air. Everyone came running out of their rooms, saying "Did you feel that?!! That was an earthquake!!" I am nervous of how the rest of my stay here in Tecpan will turn out.

Security here is a man sitting beside the cash desk with either a sawed off shotgun or a machine gun. I also see everyone here carrying machetes, like someone would carry a purse. I see children, women and men carrying them as they walk along the streets. They wak and swing them around. I smile and thank God I am in a locked bus. The way of life here is very different.

We only have one more full day with my family. I am not looking forward to saying goodbye. I have fallen in love with Timo Taehho and his family. I have fallen in love with this entire experience.

Friday Update

Content by Amanda and Joanne

We're ready for our last full work day on the site today. We have a half-day on Saturday and another half-day on Monday, but this is the last full day so everyone is starting to get concerned over leaving our new friends. The houses will not be finished - that was never expected - but we have a strong base, and the bricks are starting to go up row by row, so we can actually see above-ground progress.

Team Timoteo

Timoteo was already hard at work on the site when we arrived, and had removed all the wood used for forms. He was accompanied by his son since the kids are all finished school until January, and we were keen to start laying brick. That was not to be right away, though.

Our first task was to scrape the cement off all the wooden forms so that they could be used again - that was easy.

Our second task was to lower the level of the floor inside the house to the top of the cement footings - about 30 cm. So - you guessed it - more shovelling dirt into wheelbarrows, down the hill, across the street, over the fence (well, the fence in our drop site is pretty much gone now), and into the river-bed. We are collecting quite a bit of dirt at the drop-site so we even have to do some dirt-maintenance activities down by the river. When that was all done and leveled, Timoteo confirmed our worst fears by letting us know that the front garden area (where we put the previous dirt, leveled it out, tamped it down, and even made cement pancakes on top of) had to be level with the inside floor - so now we had to dig through hardened dirt - and the remains of a concrete pancake to get the dirt in the wheelbarrow, down the hill, across the street..... you know the drill. By the end of the day dirt was pronounced a four-letter word.    

Tim Horton's Guatemala Style

We had a special break-time today. Guatemalan coffee!! It was very sweet - and those of the group that are coffee experts proclaimed it to be the best they had tasted. I do not even like coffee, and found it very good - or perhaps that was the sugar... Timoteo's wife was there for the occasion and also his four-year-old grand-daughter (or it could have been his daughter - I still do not have the family tree worked out), and apparently kids drink coffee at a very young age.

While we were working on dirt-management-activities (DMA), Timoteo was concentrating on getting the corner blocks set. These are the very important corner stones and needed to be 'just so', so we left him alone with his plumb-bob to his delicate task. We also did sand-screening to get all the big bits of sand from the sand pile. This is needed to get a nice smooth cement for between the bricks - as any rocks would make it difficult placement exactly right. An enjoyable activity - to be sure - and we got to avoid DMA for a while (bonus!!). Krista taught us the proper technique to protect our back, and we had a good old chin-wag while preparing extra sifted-sand for Timoteo to use next week.

By the end of the day, Timoteo had all the corners done and started connecting the walls - which was a task he felt comfortable delegating to Long Colin. Colin did an excellent job - although not quite as fast as Timoteo (OK, nowhere near as fast as Timoteo) but when the bus rolled up at 4:00 the first row was 2/3 done.

Oh Canada!

Team Juan

When the alarm went off this morning all I could think was "no way is it 7am already". Muscles aching and a little lack of sleep due to the rocking party the hotel decided host last night I forced myself out of bed and was ready to start the day. Expecting everyone to be a little groggy in the morning I was shocked to show up for breakfast with everybody ready to go. 

Once we arrived at the work site, immediately everyone was slapping on the sunscreen and looking for something to do. Myself (Amanda), Tim, Melanie and Brooke started mixing the concrete right away to fill in the holes for the mason so that he could keep going laying the bricks up while the shoveling experts Eileen, Lisa, John began to clear out the dirt for the flooring. These two difficult tasks were completed by lunch time and we all sat down to take a rest. 

Lunch times are always full of great conversations and sometimes followed by a relaxing stretch in the grass. Ready to go again we are all assigned very important jobs by the mason. Lisa, John and Melanie are assigned to chip away at the bricks which takes about 20 minutes for each brick. In the mean time Eileen, Tim and Brooke are mixing concrete and filling the holes to keep up while the mason and I are laying the bricks carefully and making sure they are level. I was very privileged to have the trust from the mason to do this job. I learned a lot about the techniques they use.

The house is looking great and going up very quickly with the awesome team work and great instructions from our awesome mason Juan. At the end of the day when the team gets to look at the work we have accomplished we all feel very good leaving the work site. Although everyone is tired from all the hard work we’ve done, we’re itching to get back at it tomorrow. Although today was our last full day of work we are confident that our next two half days will be effective and get as much work done as we possibly can. It will be hard to leave this family of 10 although knowing the impact we left and how much appreciation they have for us helping them leaves us with ease and I am sure everyone plans on coming back to do more good for families as kind and as appreciative as this wonderful family.

During our pre-dinner shower time, we had an earth tremor (don't use the 'e' word - people may get nervous). The beds shook, the chairs moved, and the hanging lights swung. It only lasted about 8 seconds, but it was certainly enough to get this girl off the bed, out the door, and quick-as-a-bunny out into the street. The locals thought I was nuts - but hey, this is new for me....

Supper was pasta, coleslaw, and meat-loaf - once again a very good meal. Some pre-packing for our change of locale tomorrow, internet catch-up, and chat time. More bricks tomorrow !!!!