Construction Day 3

The thing about building a house literally from the ground up means that the early stages are a lot of work with almost no visible progress. So despite our industry over the past few days, our pictures don't look incredibly different.

Still, we are making progress! Before we got to the site we stopped by the community of Getsemani, the neighborhood in which Habitat and two partners, including Thrivent, have worked to build houses and improve the lives of the entire community, not just the Habitat families. They have initiatives for education and health, and have also helped form a cooperative for economic improvements. The co-op makes micro loans and has several money-making enterprises, including cooking and making various crafts.

But on the site, we made more cement for the foundation, and worked all the way around! This means we are set up and ready to begin laying blocks!

Speaking of blocks, they were arriving just as we did. Due to security, we couldn't leave the blocks on the street. So we formed a conveyer line to hand the blocks over to the worksite. With pretty much every family member helping, we moved almost all of the 1,275 blocks in!

And the group digging the hole for the septic system is close to being finished, too. It's becoming more of an effort to get out of the hole!

A brief note about the weather. During the day it's incredibly sunny and warm, but our site has lots of shade and a pretty good breeze. It cools down quite a bit at night in our hotel, and tonight there is a stiff wind that makes it feel quite chilly.