Our Guatemalan families

Hi all,

It was another scorcher today, but the walls on our house have been completed. I no longer have any use of my troweling arm, and after work when I was doing my laundry on our rooftop, I had to have help with the squeezing things out. Mel was happy to oblige! No such thing as a washing machine in Uspantan, so ring around the collar it is.

A little background on Onofre and his family (the homeowners of the house my team is building) He is 25, his wife is 26, and he has 2 kids who are in school in the mornings and on the worksite in the afternoons. The are delightful and Henry his son is very intelligent. We brought quite a few books in Español that he can read very easily. Onofre is a mason by trade so he is building his own home. I´m amazed and honored that he is allowing me to lay bricks on his home. ¨`Raquel is good¨´, he tells me regularly after checking my work.

Anyway, Onofre´s large extended family lives on a sort of complex on a hillside that over looks the town. He is still very much in town compared to the second site that the rest of our team is working on. Onofre paid a ´¨coyote¨to get him into the US a few years ago, where he worked in Atlanta for 6 months before he was deported in the middle of the night, loosing all his money and belongings. Of course everyone one here wants to go to the US, which has been true of every country I have been too. Onofre and his family will do well as he is intelligent and industrious. His home will be a dramatic improvement from his current situation.

The second home the other half of our team is building is only 5 minutes walk away, but much more rural and down a steep hill. Our team goes to there site to assist with hauling the cinder blocks down the hill when a truck load arrives and plunks it right in the middle of the road. They haul the gravel down the hill in burlap bags. The mom and 3 kids currently live in a tiny shack, while her husband works in Guatemala City and comes home every few weeks for a weekend. Yowzers do they need a new home!!! It will be so wonderful for them.

Tomorrow we quit at noon and 7 of us are hopping on a bus to go to Semuc Champey for some much needed R & R. A few days ago we were feeling bad about leaving work early, but that has passed!!! By afternoons we are so totally fried from the sun, the altitude and the manual labor. Some of our team is in their 70´s, and I told them that I want to be like them when I grow up.