Day 4 - Laying a firm foundation

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

“After breakfast, we get our backpacks ready for the work day: hat, gloves, insect spray (I have not seen a single mosquito yet anywhere in El Salvador), sun screen, water bottle, electrolyte powder, naproxen tablets, a few snacks, a book if it rains again like it did yesterday – and boots. You have to wear boots and long pants at the work site, where we are rebuilding the Christo Rey (Christ the King) Lutheran Church. At 7:30 a.m., we get in our van which seats 14, including the driver and our Habitat host, and make the 15-min trip to the Church via a busy city choked with diesel exhaust and people everywhere getting ready for their day. We arrive and the fence around the work site is locked. Someone shows up and unlocks it, and once we are all situated, the fence is locked again. Now, it's the 11 of us from Good Shepherd, plus about 10 workers hired by Habitat. Some are clearly masons who do a great job putting in place the decorative cinder blocks which will be for the outside of the church. The corner pillars are already in place and today, like yesterday, we are digging out the foundation already within the church walls, and we use the basics: pick axes, shovels, and wheel barrows. But today is different; we can see that we made progress yesterday on the task. Yes, things look better than they did when we arrived Monday at the same time.

The work is hard, but we have good tools, a good plan, and good teamwork, again much better than yesterday. Instead of trying to figure out what to do all the time, we now can see what should be done next. Occasionally, a crew leader comes by and gives us some corrective instructions, like Roberto who appears to be the site boss. The overall plan is always to start work about 7:45 a.m., work till 10:15, take a 15-min break, work till noon, take a 1-hour break, work, take a break, and stop at 4 p.m. We do this but most of us are not wearing wrist watches, and we don't watch the time very carefully. Except for lunch, it is hard to get everyone to take a break at the same time. Breaks are simple with bottled drinking water poured from a big jug, and today, bananas. A hot lunch was served today consisting of cheese macaroni, green beans, and a slice of beef inside a styrofoam containers with a plastic fork and knife. Most of us also have snacks purchased at a local grocery store within walking distance.

We stop early due to rain and put the tools and wheelbarrows back in a storage shed. We sit in the current church for a while and it never stops raining. It did this Monday after lunch – for more than an hour. Earlier, a woman we met yesterday named Miriam visited the site. She is about 50 years old, stocky, short, and to put things simply and accurately, worked harder than most of us. If she brings back her wheelbarrow from an emptying trip and it is not refilled fast enough, she grabs a shovel, and fills it herself. If you are standing idly in her way, she simply goes around you. When she is not on the construction site, she is sweeping the old, makeshift church nearby while singing hymns. Later, she helped serve lunch in front of the church, then mopped the church floor. Yesterday at the end of the work day, she said “Hasta la vista, baby”. No one works harder than Miriam, and we think she is a church member putting in some of the sweat equity required by Habitat.

After the work day, we stop at a small area “downtown” to do a little shopping in a courtyard of about 15 businesses selling mostly local arts and crafts. Most of the places consist of plywood booths with tin roofs and tables and walls-full of goods for sale. Some of it is touristy stuff, but other things are quite nice, and one man is making jewelry. After the shopping stop, we visit the grocery store about 4 blocks away to pick up a few goodies. Prices are typically much less than in the USA. I can remember one price: 30 un-refrigerated eggs for $3.72, and they use the US dollar here, and our dollar coins are very popular here. The average monthly wage is about $230, and the unemployment rate is 30%. Most of us in the States would consider the city of Santa Ana largely dilapitated and it offers little or no tourism for employment of locals. Our hotel rooms are $60 per night – considered very high here.

Dinner is always at 6:30, and tonight we had chicken, french fries, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and a dessert of two jelly-filled crepes and a light ice cream which seemed light and partially whipped. After, Laurie and Sara had smoothies – both served room temperature.

We sorted and organized our toys for our orphanage visit Wednesday. Then, as always, we went up to the patio on the roof for some devotions, discussion, and prayer. It was a good day, though we are all sore somewhere, and often in places we did not know could get sore.”

Post by Dean Olson