Day 3: Monday, February 21

Our first day of work wasn’t exactly easy, but we finished in grand style!

We had expected to be in a neighborhood of houses built by Thrivent, but it turns out that we are building on a single site in the middle of an existing community. For more information on the family for whom we are building and the community, please check out Cappie’s excellent write-up here.

Our house is at one of the earliest phases of construction. The foundation trenches are dug and the rebar installed, but we were in charge of pouring in the concrete to actually function as the foundation.Of course, there aren’t any automatic cement mixers around. Instead, we have shovels! The masons (Saoul, the head mason, assisted by his brother, Jose) gave us the desired recipe for the mixture, and then showed us their preferred method of mixing it. Basically, it involved shoveling into several piles and then back again, ensuring that all the ingredients are fully mixed together.

Then, you create a sort of volcano, add water in the middle, and gradually shovel all the dry ingredients into the middle. If you do it right, you wind up with a little compact pile, with the water all in the middle. Making a mistake results in water going everywhere! But by the end of the day, we had the technique down pat, which will serve us well the rest of the week!

Saoul is, of course, in charge. But with some help from Alex, Don was able to explain his construction experience, and Saoul became comfortable, after a short period of supervision, with letting him work on his own. This will come in extremely handy once we start laying brick!

We worked very well together as a group. In fact, we worked so well that we finished pouring the foundation well in advance of the end of the day. With our transportation not coming for another few hours, we were faced with several hours to kill. But then Pr. Tom noticed that we had used up the vast majority of the water that was designated for us to use during construction. He asked how the barrels would be refilled, and he learned that someone would have to travel a bit down the road to the community spigot, filling smaller water buckets, and then bring them back to the barrels. So we volunteered to take care of it.

Throughout the day (especially after lunch, once school let out), we had been attracting neighborhood children, especially the relatives of “our” family. In many of these families, the children are responsible for collecting the water and bringing it home as one of their daily chores. So we asked them to guide us and show us how it was done.

Thus began the parade of the gringos! Not only did we have the kids with us, but we attracted the attention of the rest of the neighborhood as we went, too. Some of the girls took charge of the spigot, turning the water on and off, and checking to see when our buckets were full. We’d then take the buckets back to the house to fill the barrels. While the rest of us were waiting, either for another of our buckets to fill or for another member of the community to get their water, we’d play with the kids, laughing and joking.

Of course, we also got huge laughs when several of the men decided to take the water back by carrying it on their head. This is a common method for carrying heavy or awkward items, but by women. Men usually carry the buckets over their shoulder. But the head is actually much easier and more comfortable!

Back at the hotel, the adventure was figuring out how to get hot water. Some cabins had a functioning hot water heater/showerhead (the heating coils are in the showerhead, heating the water as it flows), and others, well, not so much. Perhaps you might be able to see why…