We only
drove about an hour, outside the city of Buenos Aires but still in the providence
Buenos Aires. We arrived at a school in
the area and unpacked all the supplies assembly-line-style while a lot of the
organizers ran around in ridiculous costumes (I should mention that everyone
here was between 18 and 30 probably). We
then sat down and EVERYONE (about 75 of us) had to get up and tell a
joke…either one of our own or we could pull from a basket. And, miraculously, I
successfully delivered my own joke in Spanish in front of 75 Spanish-speakers…WOOO. I was quite nervous though, needless to say J
At this
point it was getting late…as in after midnight.
So, we then ate dinner and finally got divided up into out six-person
groups to build individual houses. We
had 4 girls and 2 guys in our group. One
of the girls was from Spain, but all the rest were from Buenos Aires, and
everyone was really nice. After talking about what we were going to do the
following day, we finally got to bed around 330. Even though we were on tile floors in a
classroom, I was so tired that I slept like a baby J
SATURDAY
I woke up
to the sound of shouting Argentines dressed in costumes and blaring wacky music. I swear I felt like I was waking up to the
circus raiding the building. I just couldn’t
help but laughing in disbelief as I laid there not wanting to get up at 7 am
after three and a half hours of sleep and as a guy in a grim reaper costume
poked at the girl sleeping next to me.
By the end
of the day though I was completely exhausted.
We had a very light breakfast (Argentine style) of coffee, mate, and
tiny crackers and then went outside to discuss the day and play some
games. We ended up waiting for hours for
the bus that never came so we finally got on a mini bus/van to get to the villa
and packed about 40 people with shovels and construction tools into a bus meant
for maybe 20. Seriously, someone sat on
my lap the whole time.
The
neighborhood reminded me a lot of Equador.
There were wood fenses and houses and tin roofs. There were some nicer houses too but the same
was true of Ecuador. Our family for whom
we were building the house was really nice, although I didn’t get to talk to
the husband and wife much the first day.
I did get to talk to the grandma thought. And I just love that everyone called her
grandma even though she obviously wasn’t any of our grandmothers. The family also had three little girls, all
under the age of four and they were really adorable.
This first
day, we managed to get all 15 posts buried (so the house is elevated for
flooding) and only really stopped for an awesome lunch with the best chicken
leg I’ve ever had. By the end of the day
we got most of the boards nailed on top of the posts so that we could set the
pre-assembled floor on top. It was great
to see all of our work come together in the last 10 minutes to see a
real-looking base for the house.
That night we played some games,
ate, and I got a great opportunity to talk to a bunch of Argentines about so
many interesting things. It was
interesting hearing their perceptions of Argentina and its government, and
their perceptions of the US. The
funniest part was when one guy asked me if people in the US actually think they’re
the best. It led to an interesting
conversation about the US in foreign affairs and how they all see us as the
number one economy in the world. I then
pointed out that we are $12 trillion dollars
in debt. ha
SUNDAY
We again
woke up at the break of dawn, but thankfully had a little better breakfast
since we had these fried pastries :D We got to the house earlier and started
putting up the pre-assembled walls. We worked hard all day and finally finished
after dark. We had a “finishing ceremony”
and gave the family some house-warming food and balloons. We were surprised that
the mom didn’t come out for this part but we later found out that she did not
want to cry in front of us. It turns out
that the reason they were getting this house was so that her three older
children from her first marriage could move back in with them. Social services
had come to their house and said that six kids could not live with them under
one roof.
It was a great experience but I was
mentally and physically exhausted. The stress
of using so much Spanish, the extreme weakness in my forearms….all I could
think was how are we going to make it back to Buenos Aires tonight when it has
been dark for an hour already and we are still at this new house?? We finally did get back at midnight and I
finally got back at 1AM. I have never
been so happy to not have a class until 4 :))
One interesting thing that we all
noticed (everyone from my program I mean) was how much the Argentines share
their drinks. When we opened a bottle of
juice to rehydrate, each person took a drink and passed it. There really wasn’t such thing as “your” or “my”
drink. And we of course had mate at
different points, just passing it around, even to the people working on the
roof.
The other thing I noticed here was
how starved the families’ dogs were. It
was just so sad how one of our family’s dogs just laid there all day. Even when
her skinny puppy came up to her to try to play, she just lifted her head to
look and then put it back down. The
worst part though was that there wasn’t all that much that the family could do
with as little as they had.
Aside from the dog and her puppy,
Un techo was an incredible experience and if you ever make the trek to
Argentina, Chile, or one of the other countries that do this project, I highly
recommend you join the trip. J
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