Tuesday, 20 Oct 2015
Dean

The rain stopped yesterday at about 4 p.m. and today, we worked at the job site, and very hard.  More on that a little later.

Yesterday, to pass the rainy day, we walked in our ponchos just a few blocks to visit Francis's mother, Francisca.  She owns a bakery and a dress shop next to it.  She's been divorced 20 years (Francis is 27).  She seems to have a very popular bakery, as customers come and go often, but her specialty is sweets.  She served us sweet empanadas - one cream-filled, the other pineapple.  She had made them just that morning.  She has several open-air gardens built right into her home, and two upstairs patios, one for laundry, and one for lounging.  She is clearly a dynamo and a very successful small business owner.

Around noon-time, some ladies from a local co-op came to serve us lunch.  The co-op was started with the help of Habitat.  The sell arts and crafts, and make microloans to co-op members.  They are very progressive thinkers, and seem to be following the Ten Thousand Villages model whether they know it or not.

Today, we had breakfast at 6:45 a.m., and departed to the work site by 7:30.  No rain!  Temps in the 70's but humid.  The worksite is probably only 20 min from the hotel here on the town square.  However, the road is pretty rocky, and needs to be navigated carefully.  It is lined with the homes of people who are obviously living in a subsistent manner.  They have goats, chickens, corn crops, and cook over wood.  We visited some homes, and they are generally brick with metal roofs, and dirt floors.  Everyone is totally approachable as if we are all in one big happy family.  Amazingly, kids (off from school due to poor roads from the rain) and adults both are neat, clean, and well-dressed.  You can see they bring a deliberate dignity to to their appearance.  Believe me, I see people on the campus of the University of Illinois every single day who do not measure up to the pride of appearance of the average El Salvadoran we saw today - living in severe poverty.

At the work site, we immediately got to work filling in a foundation for one of the bedrooms in the house we are working on.  Each house consists of 2 bedrooms, a living room, and outdoor, but covered kitchen, and a bathroom and shower.  Francis says about 65% of people have electricity, but only for lights.  The problem is plumbing and water.  Even in a Habitat house, you might flush the toilet with a bucket.  We did see a public faucet where people get drinking water.

After moving around a good deal of dirt, we got to putting a soupy concrete down into the cinder block walls.  Every single block gets a piece of rebar down it for earthquake protection.

We also sifted concrete using a screen.  The cement and concrete get mixed on the ground with a shovel.  The only power tool we had today was a block cutter used by one of the 4 masons hired by Habitat.  We took a break in the morning, had lunch, another break, and quit at 4 p.m.

We actually have taken some nice showers here - warm water!

Thanks for reading everyone.  Photos later.