The house is finished!

The house is finished - it looks pretty darn good and we got it done in 2 weeks! The end product is three rooms with 3 windows, 3 doors, and a bathroom with shower and toilet. The family that will live there consists of a mom & dad (ages 31 & 33) and 5 children ages 18 months to 7 years. They will be required to pay a minimal amount of rent (about $20/month), take care of the house, and have all the kids in school (except for the eldest who has cerebral palsy). They are thrilled to have a new house and wanted to celebrate with us on the final day. Although it is generally very difficult to get time off, both the mom & dad stayed home. The folks from ConstruCasa brought a cake a large bottle of Pepsi to celebrate mid-morning, and the family invited us & the construction workers to share lunch with them. It meant a lot to them to cook a meal for us and we enjoyed it immensely. They made our favorite Guatemalan meal: Chicken Pepian, rice with vegetables and hibiscus drink (which they very kindly boiled for us then indulged in a purchase of ice to cool it back down). It was easily one of the tastiest meals we've had yet!


All in all, it was an excellent volunteer experience. The folks at Constru Casa did a great job of integrating us into the project, we enjoyed working with the construction team, and were actually able to help out some. Constru Casa is a great little organization - the overhead is very low, they work closely with the Guatemalan social service organizations that already exist, and they basically do great work. We were happy to find a group that aligned with our values so closely. Thanks to Tomas, Cesar & William for teaching us how to build and for letting us get in the way a little bit while we learned.




I think Kelsey Larissa both learned some valuable lessons also. They both declared that they don't want to do any kind of manual labor for a living, and seem to understand how lucky they are to have the educational opportunities that they do (yea! Mission accomplished!!!). They both noticed that the Guatemalan kids work extremely hard just to survive on a day to day basis. And the kids here would give anything to have the "luxury" of just going to school and studying. It's annoying to think about American kids who squander the chances they have....