Oh, Ecuador..

I was cleaning up my place today and came across the journal that I kept while traveling in Ecuador last March. I dusted off the cover, and flipped through the pages, stopping to read passages here and there. There was one day in particular that I think captured the experience I had with Habitat for Humanity, the local people I was working with and befriended, as well as the comraderie of my fellow volunteers. So I'm posting today, verbatim, my journaling from March 17, 2007:

St. Patricks Day in the US, no one wearing green here, myself included. Oh wait, my Keens are green. Phew! I'm currently at the Quito airport on layover. I left Tosagua this morning, traveled by taxi to Manta and flew to Quito, enroute to Cuenca. I'll be in Cuenca in another hour. It feels REALLY GOOD to be away from the heat and humidity. I didn't realize how crushing it was until stepping off the plane in Quito. Ironic this morning in Tosagua felt cool because it was cloudy and 6am.

What an exhausting week it's been! The team split into 2, 1/3 at another site where the house has been started so they are laying brick, and the rest at the site we broke ground at on Monday. We've done a lot in 4 1/2 days. There is a foundation wall about 3 ft high now (plus more below grade) with 9 rebar columns growing out of it. The "Maestro" told us Monday we add 20 cm more to the wall to get it above the high flood water mark, then we in fill the foundation with a SHIT LOAD of dirt, big rocks (piedras grandes), small rocks (piedras pequenos), and sand (arena). Then.....we get to build walls! They tell us by Wednesday we will be building walls. I wish we could stay to see it thru.

Rocky and I have cemented (pun intended) our bond this week. I speak enough Spanish that he and I can talk, and so we've spent time every day talking and working. There are 3 skilled workers, the Maestro and 2 others. Every Habitat build has a Maestro (teacher) who is there to provide construction experience and oversight. The 3 of them are men of few words, but much skill. It is impressive to see what they can fabricate out of almost nothing. Our rebar bending jigs are a board with small pieces of rebar hammered into it. Our compactor is a large block of wood with a handle nailed onto it. One of our hacksaws is a blade welded to a bent piece of rebar, etc, etc. 80% of the formwork is being reused from other jobs. Every nail is accounted for and reused. Bent ones straightened. Nothing is wasted.

So what does a work day entail? Up at 6:45am. Pull on clothes: yesterdays shorts, clean t-shirt, socks. Brush teeth, take crap (diarrhea AGAIN), smear DEET on arms, legs, neck. Same with sunscreen. Fill 2L water bottle, stumble downstairs and outside. Hotel serves us breakfast which sometimes I can eat. Bananas good. Queso fresca not so good at the moment. Susan makes French press coffee. We finish eating, we pull on our mud and concrete crusted shoes and climb into our vans. It is so fucking hot - already. We immediately push open all the windows and bitch about whoever had to run inside and is preventing us from driving and getting some air. So we sit and sweat for 5 - 10 minutes, then drive to the site. We roll out of the van into heat and dust. At our site we are building next to the sister's house, which is on 8' stilts, so we have a place in the shade to keep our bags, and sit to rest. There is no shade on the job site, nor where we mix concrete.

Concrete...wonderful stuff. Made from 2 50kg bags of cement, 2 heaping wheel barrows of sand, 4 heaping wheel barrows of gravel, and 5 - 7 buckets of water. Steps to make it:

1. Thoroughly mix sand and cement on side of dusty hot road. Assistance by 3 - 5 small children may be offered.
2. After mixing, spread out into the shape of a large volcano crater. Again, small children readily available.
3. Dump gravel into center. Pre mix sand/cement mixture in the hope it will be easier to combine the rest of the sand later. At this point, child helpers become dangers to those around them.
4. Pour 3 - 4 buckets of water on pile. Watch water carry away precious cement into street. Remind yourself it's not your house. Do your best to scoop cement slurry back onto rocks.
5. Most important step: work like mad shoveling, shoveling, turning, spreading gravel, sand and cement, adding water as necessary. Some water will be from the sweat rolling off the faces, arms, and legs of all those mixing.
6. Warning: Mixing takes 20 - 30 minutes. Efforts longer than5 minutes will make you feel like you're going to pass out. This is NORMAL. Stand and lean against your shovel. The feeling should pass. Every 10 minutes stop and drink water.

This has been the extent of my day Tues - Fri. Highlight of my workday on Friday: Rocky asked me to ride with him to get more cement. We rode in traditional Ecuadorian laborer fashion: standing in the back of a high-sided work truck. There was still some manure in it from the 2 cows that had been delivered that morning, but I wasn't complaining!

Highlight of the week: Last night Rocky's mom Laticia prepared a crab bake for us. It was so generous, and SO GOOD! Nothing like a dungeness, better in a way that only10 hours of excruciatingly work and a gift from someone who has so little to give can make it. Truly unforgettable.

Links to some pictures (my camera was stolen the weekend after we finished the build, so I lost my 350 photos of the trip):

From Erin McSherry, Habitat Coordinator: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZMm7Rk2aM2Lj4

From the Ross/Helliwell family in Halifax: http://picasaweb.google.com/EcuadorHFH/EcuadorWebPhotos?authkey=gFJ0OsTbD4Q

From Margot: http://web.mac.com/mmcfedries/iWeb/Site%202/Welcome.html