Hola Amigo's

 

I am back from the most humbling and eye opening experience of my life. 

I thought I knew POVERTY and DESPAIR, but I didn't. 

I thought I knew HUNGER but I didn't. 

I thought I knew COURAGE and DETERMINATION, but I didn't.

 

I am thankful that I didn't get ill as some of our people did.

 

We all need to count every blessing every single day.  We don't know how good our lives are. 

The next time someone grumbles about something they DON'T have,  tell them about this. 

To give you another example of how tough they have it, I exchanged money at the airport when I got there.  Their unit of money is called a Quetzals.  For $100.00 American dollars, I got back $760.00 Quetzals. Gourmet coffee in this country is usually $8-$15 per pound in the grocery store. There I got 3 pound bags for $60 Q which is less than $10.00.  So I literally brought back an empty suitcase of items which is a HUGE jump-start on my holiday shopping.  Most of my team and I left all the clothing we took with us including socks, shoes and underwear for our three families.  I just kept what I needed to wear home. 

 

There were 24 of us on this trip from all over the world.  Fumiko, from Tokyo was the runner-up to this years Founder's Award and had just received a visit from the Fishers, the founders of Gap in her home store.  She is a part-time sales associate in a Gap store.  We also had Val, from London another amazing person.  The rest of us were spread from New York to the Midwest to the west coast.  Each of the people on this trip were so phenomenal and inspiring with work they had done at home.  It was amazing.  It was a mix of office and field, full time and part time from Gap, Banana Republic and of course me, the only Old Navy person. 

 

Our village was in Sololá, near Panjahacel, way up in the mountains.  The drive up there is a whole nother letter.  Let me say chicken buses are scarier than anything I have ever seen, even in Mexico.  Most of the roads are 2 lane and even high in the mountains with narrow sides looking way down, they pass each other in curves flying and with barely space between.  We were on a big tour bus which was safer and we had a very nice driver.  It is a 3 1/2 hour drive up there from the airport and again a separate experience.  They are building a highway and they close the roads at 4pm every day for a hour siesta.  If you don't get past that point before they close, you sit on the side of the road backed up 5 miles or more till it is reopened.  It does not open till 8am in the morning and the wait is worse.  We got lucky going but had to wait coming back to the airport.  I never once saw any kind of lighting on these roads and know why the Habitat people say the roads are not safe at night.  Very high and very narrow with speeding chicken buses, you figure it out.

 

We stayed in a hotel on Lake Atitlan, which is between two volcanoes that look like Mt. Rainier only without snow.  Both could be seen from my room and my terrace.  This was a nice hotel with its own well supply but we still were advised NOT to drink water. We were given plenty of bottled water daily even for brushing teeth and gargling.  It is the end of the rainy season and was very cool in the evenings, and since the hotel does not have HEAT, we were given two heavy blankets for the night. The power went out several times and hot water was very inconsistent.  Nice cold brisk showers! That wakes you up.  They did have one American thing that was funny, internet access was $1.00 American money for every 30 minutes and they had 2 pc's on site on wireless.  Most people had blackberry and cell service (except for Verizon).  T-Mobile had the best service.

 

Our team was divided into 3 groups.  Each group had a family that we built for.  We were introduced to the Mason at the site.  The Mason is the experienced builder and usually someone close to the family.  In our case it was another brother of the husband.  My family was a mom Isabella age 23, her husband Ronnie, age 26 and three children.  The little boy is 7 and was so malnourished that he was smaller than his 3 year old sister, and a baby girl 11 months.  They marry early and women are considered old maids at 20.  They received a Habitat home of 4 rooms.  These houses are made from cement blocks and have corrugated tin roofs.  They are reinforced for mud slides with rebar.  Guatemalans do not assign names to the rooms or purposes. This home has 4 rooms about 6 foot square and will eventually cost the family about $7000 US.  They will have an outhouse, a washing tent (a tin roof cover over a large plastic free standing double laundry sink)  and maybe a bathing lean-to which they will have to construct on their own.  These bathing lean to's look very much like outdoor sauna's.  They have a fire pit and a bucket to heat water.  It makes steam and they sqat or sit on benches to wash themselves.   For seats in their bathing tents, they take logs and split them in half and place across cement blocks.  Some families make their own furniture which is amazing. 

 

One house near our work site was a completed Habitat house and had 3 rooms with a 4 burner apt size propane gas cook stove.  This home had one bed for 6 people, the stove and a table.  The family sits on plastic stools or the floor.  All of the belongings were kept in cardboard boxes stacked in the larger of the 3 rooms with the bed. The home actually belonged to the brother of our owner.  The brother works in the city for 15 days on and then gets 15 days off.  He rents the house to this brother while he is gone until theirs is done.

 

The father of the house works in Guatemala City which is almost 4 hours away. He works every other day from 8 to 5.  There is no bus that gets him there in time for work so he goes every Sunday evening, rents a room and stays there until the weekend.  He has a motorcycle as transportation as does a lot of people even women.  (Want to talk scary,  see these passing in between passing chicken buses on the roads and they rarely wear helmets)  He works odd jobs in the city on his days off.  He brings in around $500 Q per month.  The mom sews from about 8pm at night when the kids go to sleep to around 1am and turns out one jacket or table cloth per month. Her embroidery is amazing.  She makes about $80 Q per month because the material and thread is furnished to her by a middle person and she is just the talent. They also have an amazing farm and grow corn, beans, collard greens and a fruit that looks like a watermelon that candy is made from.  Their little son Johnnie became very attached to me and followed me around helping me on the site. 

 

As a matter of fact on the last night I received the Pied Piper Award because I was just a kid magnet while I was there.  All of the participants got awards for one thing or the other.  Fumiko got the Long Distance Award coming from Japan, one person got the National Geographic Human Appetizer Award since she was bitten by a dog at her work site and one of the guys on my team got the Mostly Likely to Find a Place to Nap on the Job and so on.  The awards were all fun and in good spirit.  Luckily there was NO HR person in our midst.  Zero means Zero means we won't talk about it after Guatemala. LOL

 

The closing ceremony was so uplifting that all of us were in tears.  All of the Habitat people, all three families and all of our people met at our worksite.  Some of the family members make cakes and punch for us (which was the only time we were allowed to taste food other that what the hotel made for us).  We opened with a prayer and speech by Habitat representatives.  Each group was given a Bible and a picture of us for their family.  The Guatemalans are very religious people and I had seen several beautiful churches in villages along the way.  As my groups, representative, I then had to stand up in front of everyone and say a little something to our family and the whole audience.  I thanked them for allowing us to come and help and wished them many years of happiness in their homes.  Not a dry eye I tell ya. 

 

All of the families then read us letters they had written and thanked us .  By the way this whole thing is translated as none of the families speak English.  One of the families (the largest one, mom, dad and 6 kids) gave each team member a post card which probably cost them several hundred Q. It will take them months to earn that back.  Again not a dry eye. 

 

So for those I work with I have new skills to add to my IDO.  I can mix cement and make mortar, and I know how to make brackets to hold the rebar in place.  I also know how to place cement blocks and grove out the extra cement to make them look nice.  My specialty was taking the 12 inch rods and bending them around nails placed in a piece of lumber to make what looks like a c bracket.  These then get wired to the rebar to make a frame.  I can DJ and I can barter very very well. 

 

We did have fun too as we went on a boat ride, went shopping where bartering is an art form, had a night out in a local club and held an awards night with Karaoke.  On the boat trip, I had a local actually follow me all the way to the boat and even up the dock lowering the price as she went because I was holding an American dollar in my hand. I kept saying no gracias as I walked away with her getting lower and lower until I gave her the dollar but refused the merchandise. I discovered on night three that I can DJ since the DJ that was hired was sleeping on the couch during karaoke night. I picked one song and then just took over when the DJ fell asleep.  It was a BLAST. 

 

There is so much more that I am sure I will be remembering more later as I go though the pictures.  I am looking for ways to try and go back next year so If I start fund raising I'll be sure to let you know. 

 

We are all looking for a website to post the pictures on.  I took over 300 and several people took double that.  I will keep you posted. 

 

I feel honored to have been selected to go and once again I am even more grateful than ever for all I have and have cancelled all my pity parties for things I don't. 

 

Martha