Little house in Guatemala, week 8-9 and cost recap
Our summer volunteers spend one week building cinderblock homes for families in desperate need of a stable house. Volunteers spend the entire week working alongside the families receiving the homes. It takes about 7 to 10 days to build a house for a family. Normally the volunteers help with the construction of the house from day one. The completion of the house and the subsequent ceremonial key handover to the family is for most volunteers a very emotional experience and a very special moment.
Harvesting fields, gathering firewood, nursing the newest baby and hauling laundry to the creek is the rural Guatemalan version of a workout. It is an honor to engage with these women in securing their housing. Our part feels like a small thing in light of the big issues they face.
About Finding Freedom through Friendship
The poor turkey is not tied by the beach so that he doesn’t bother the hens, maybe in a few days he can be free again. What feels like we are spending a lot is we are constantly making checks to people, for material, wages, and paying things little by little. We sold the plastic roof cover that cost us $160 for $110 after one month of use to a neighbor with a leaking roof. No profit here but at least we got some money back to spend on the new transparent roof. Most of it was to register a limited company of which we each hold 50% of the shares. This is the eighth part about the conversion of the land I bought in Guatemala and my new life here, you can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 and Part 7 if you missed them.
It was back in 2009 when the rescue and custody center for wild animals in Bolivia was founded as an NGO. A Swiss animal lover created this wonderful animal welfare project on a 45 hectar protected nature reserve in the middle of a very varied tropical landscape. Wild animals find ideal conditions for a secure life in the primeval forests, swamps and savannahs. The nature reserve has extensive, species-appropriate animal facilities, where the freed wild animals have a second chance for a better life.
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Building our first house donated by Finding Freedom in 2009 was a humbling, dirty and hands-on experience. It was the first and last time that I ever personally assisted with the construction process of one of our Guatemalan homes. There is no part of the blister-inducing process I regret, but there were a few lessons learned from the experience that we have incorporated into our narrative as an organization.
John Lothrop gave a presentation on his recent trip to Guatemala to build homes. John and Ron Sack led a group of eleven people from Crete and Lincoln to help build four homes in the small Mayan village of Aldea San Jose Xepatan. They worked with the non-profit organization Constru Casa (see ). In addition to building homes, the group was able to do some sightseeing in Antigua, Guatemala and at Lake Atitlan. Many of the impoverished people of the rural countryside in Guatemala don’t have much money, and much of their basic necessities are lacking. The act of building a small house out of brick, which costs about 1,700 US dollars to build, can affect a family’s quality of life immensely.
Creating pathwaysout of poverty
Each remittance house in the western highlands tells its own story. Some of the houses are occupied by the wives, children, or parents of men working in the U.S. Even so, not all of the houses showed signs of success. Many of them remain half built, in some stage of halting progress or abandonment. I was told the image was both a status symbol and a statement of gratitude to the U.S. as a place of opportunity. But it also seemed to remark on the immediate surroundings, the atmosphere of scarcity that drove people away in the first place.
Quality materials and structural systems that comply with the rules of the Guatemalan Association of Structural Engineer and Institute of Cement and Concrete of Guatemala are used. Every week, I post encouragement for slowing and taking time to breathe in each moment around you. If you don’t want to miss out, enter your email below. As a sweet thank-you, I’ll send you a free eBook about how to gracefully deal with social rejection.
Little house in Guatemala, week 8-9 and cost recap
The families who can benefit from the construction projects must in turn apply and be in possession of the land on which the house is to be built. Subsequently, the situation of the family is analyzed taking into account socio-economic aspects. Improvements were really, really cheap, getting a transparent roof for $500 totally changed the house for example. Most of the big spending is going into the new building, but DIY goes a really long way with very little. Quite reasonable to make a house liveable, start building a new room and live for two months. I didn’t think I could make a difference among this much poverty.
My grandparents had worked to build a house here before, so they knew a lot of the people there and were glad to see them again. The next morning was a Saturday and we did various sorts of activities like hiking and touring the city. The weekend was a blast but by Monday we were ready to get to work. They work hard, they are outdoors the majority of the day and questioning their place in the social fabric of Guatemala is not something that occurs to them.
Building a house without a concrete mixer, heavy excavation equipment, proper tools or even gloves is a job that is not for the faint of heart. Most men living in the rural villages would claim that they have “construction experience.” So now, do I. A typical house is made of cornstalk walls, a dirt floor and a scrap material roof. This volunteer project takes place on the amzing Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
All the kids loved it and every time someone played a card, they would scream BS with enthusiasm. Eventually, they would have all the cards in their hand, but they didn’t care. They had huge grins on their little faces as if they were trying to show me how many teeth they had. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but somehow we decided to play BS, the card game. (I don’t know if you are familiar with the game, but basically, you play cards face down, and if people think you are lying then they say BS.
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