Guatemala Bound With Karen ~ Indulging in Living: Of Bano's and Barfing and Beauty and Birthdays

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Last day of stove building for the GSP volunteers of 2011.

My stomach continues to be queezy but I get up determined to fight back. We're working in a new community today. As hard as it is to believe, it is poorer place than all the others. How can that be possible I ask myself?

Our family has lots of adults, although it is difficult to tell who belongs to whom and where they all come from. Our arrival brings with it a palpable excitement. Poor does not equal despondant I have learned. These women are keen participants in this project despite their circumstances. It is likely, I now feel, that they don't realize that their circumstances are lacking.

Janice tells me that there are sewing machines in one of the three buildings in this compound of houses. We ask one of te men what they use them for. He says pants. We assume that they, like so many of the other families we have built for, sell jeans in the maket.

I soak the cement blocls in ice cold water and stack them close to Don Jaun. One of the men helps for a short time. He proudly tells me that he has worked in the US. He quickly grows tired of helping. Jim and I get the 30 clay bricks from another building with the help of two women, and place them softly on a plastic bag we have spread out. We now know that there are no replacements if we break one, so we treat them gingerly. We also so that the women are the workers. Children on backs. Laundry on heads. Cement blocks in arms.

Janice and Don Juan mix mortar. Jim and I apply it, making a mess and then cleaning it up. Don Juan is fast and doesn't really care about mess. He gets the job done just as effectively. Like all the mason's he has his own style and it works. I know we are holding him back. He gets paid by the stove and our lack of finesse could be an irritant. But he keeps smiling. Later I learn that his plan is to stay in the village overnight and to keep building. GSP has build 27 stoves in the past week. We have funded 150 this time around. The masons will build the rest. Marvin says he can build three stoves a day on his own. Yikes! I can't imagine how tired he must be at the end of that!

By 10am I am desperately in need of a Bano. I ask and get a nervous look. At about the same time Marg is asking the same thing of her family. They point to the ditch. Apparently there is only one toilet in this community. The elder woman at my house takes me up a hill, grabbing a stick along the way to scare off a dog. She calls out to her neighbour, a few words are exchanged and iIam shown a room with a metal door. These folks on the top of the hill are obviously of another class. They have an almost modern looking toilet, no crude hole here! It flushes like the one we use to have at the cottage when we were kids, with a bucket of water. A bucket and huge tub of water awaits. The sink is used to hold TP. I have my pockets full but I'm happy to save it for my next call of nature.

I am cold. It is cold under the grey morning sky and no matter how much trowling I attempt to do I cannot generate enough warmth to feel even slightly well. Tom comes by and makes me follow him to the lunch spot. Marg and Joe have things organized. Lunch today is in a new building. We all feel the contradictions in this village and don't know what to make of them.

Marg has made pasta salad and there are bakery goods and a yummy looking pastel for Margaurite's birthday. I eat nothing. Instead I borrow Rita's coat and wrap it around my shoulders. I hunker down in a chair in a sunny spot. After lunch Tom props me up in the van where it is warm,.

I sleep.

I wake and observe.

I take photos.

I eat dinner cautiously.

I take immodium and gravol liberally.