Tuesday

We woke early, showered, and enjoyed pancakes with our host, Oscar. Then we hiked to the Dreamer Center to be divided into service teams and for rides to our work sites.

I was put into "Team D," lead by Edgar, an employee from the project. There were six of us altogether. We climbed into the back of a small pickup and headed down the bumpy cobblestone streets . Our work site is in Pastores, a town near Antigua. Our task is to build a house for a family that lives there. The man of the household is a shoemaker (like many people in Pastores) and makes roughly $118 per month. The mother is a housekeeper and earns $92 per month. There are numerous children living with them and members of the extended family. They have two shacks of wood and corrugated metal but there is not enough room for them all to sleep indoors (at least not yet). Here is a photo of their property before we started work:

Our pickup stopped next to a bamboo or corn stalk fence on the narrow street. This is our work site. The family's land is sandwiched between cinder block walls that sit atop property lines. As we walked into the area Cesár, the father, scraped off the top of a wooden table (possibly their only one, from what I saw) and insisted we set our backpacks atop it. He was running around and tidying up the dirt yard somewhat because of our presence.

It appears their bathroom is outdoors - an area with running water and some kind of toilet, surrounded by black plastic sheets held up by scavenged wood poles. Their laundry was hanging out to dry on a long clothesline that crossed their yard .

It is amazing how little these people have. Their clothes, at least the nicer ones, hang in a leaning armoire with broken mirrors that is sitting outside. If the people didn't SEEM so pleasant and happy (despite their poverty) I would have felt great pity for them.

We set to work digging a trench, 16" deep, for the foundation of the new house. We laid three rows of cinder blocks, square and straight, for the walls. Next we leveled out the interior and prepared for tomorrow's work of pouring concrete for the floor. The panels that will be used for the walls were also painted today. Here's a photo of the site after the first day of work:

While we worked, a little girl named Miralda (I think) was with us. She is so cute. She tried helping us move cinder blocks. Giving up on that, she helped to paint the wall panels blue . When she wasn't working, she was enjoying the bubbles and candy given her by the girls on our service team.

Now, we have just finished supper at Oscar's place (Oscar and his wife are my host family). We had scrambled eggs, pureed black beans, cooked plantains, and a strange milk/rice/everything drink we ended up calling "H-Juice." The name starts with "H," but we can't remember what it is. We are being fed very well. But the diet is very different from what I'm used to. There is very little meat.

I forgot to mention that we had Mass this morning in the Dreamer Center chapel with the kids from the project. I sat next to two of the kids, Manuel and William. The Mass was in Spanish, so I didn't catch all the words. But it was fun to meet the kids.

Tonight we are going to a bar as a group for Salsa dancing lessons here in Antigua .