I just signed up (sent in my deposit of $350) to join a Habitat Humanity Global Village team in El Salvador this March. I don't know exactly where in El Salvador we will be or exactly what we will be doing. All I know is that we will be working to give a house to a homeless family.
I am excited about this adventure, but it is also reminding me of one of the worst weeks of my life. Remember when I volunteered for Un Techo Para Mi Pais in Costa Rica? It rained the entire time, and I didn't have boots or a rain jacket. We slept on the concrete floor of a school and didn't even have access to showers. No, you don't remember? Well, here's an excerpt from a previous post to remind you:
Some highlights included washing my face with sewer water, bathing in a men’s urinal and working four days straight in constant rain and mud. On the second morning, I cried and was just about to walk out on the project when my friend Dan gave the whole group of soggy gringos a pep talk.
“We are Americans from the United States,” he said. “We don’t quit. It’s in our blood to stay longer than is really necessary. Take the Vietnam War. Or the Iraq War. Or The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy.”
With that we all felt a surge of pride and headed out into the rain and mud to prove we don’t quit. But ultimately all but three of us did quit. I left on the morning of the last day when the blisters on the bottoms of my feet had finally gotten the best of me. Oh, what sweet pain I felt limping my way to the bus stop! I have photos to post, but the Internet is running so slowly today, I think I will wait to post them later.Another thing that sticks with me from that experience was a little girl that lived in one of the garbage-bag houses we were replacing. She was a gorgeous little girl with lots of energy. Sometimes I would sneak out of the rain to play with her in her little mud-floor home. I would sit on a wooden stump while she jumped on the bed and talked away in a Spanish I didn't really understand. Then she said she wanted to watch a movie, and sure enough, even in the garbage-bag house, there was a TV and DVD player. She popped in the disk and settled in to watch the flick. And a flick it was! I've never seen such. It was porn! Naked people having sex! She was grinning from ear to ear and didn't really seem to understand why I was getting upset. Finally, after I threatened to go back to the rain and build her house, she took the DVD out and returned to jumping on the bed.
The good news is that I know for a fact that the Habitat for Humanity build will be better than the Un Techo Para Mi Pais build because NOTHING could be worse than the Un Techo Para Mi Pais build.
Here are those photos I promised:
