On the down side, it rained - hard - for all but maybe an hour the entire week. Think of the hardest rain you've ever seen, and then thinking about trying to build houses in it for 10-12 hours a day. Also, throw in the fact that your most technologically advanced tools are a hammer and a length of plastic tube used to make sure everything is level. Then, add on that you're getting three small meals of rice and beans a day, not getting to shower, wash your hands, or sometimes even have access to a toilet... and then at the end of the day sleep on the cold, wet, concrete floor of an elementary school classroom with no windows. Wake up at 5:30 to the sound of more driving rain and start all over again. Needless to say, it was an tough week on the body, and if I were to make a list of the ten most unsanitary things I've done in my life (which I'm liable to do - I love lists), I'm pretty sure all ten would have occurred in Batan.
Walking in the rain w/gigante beam. 25 minutes or so to the house, a solid 40 with the beam.
What I looked at for more hours than I can count. The process: Dig, fill with rocks, fill with mud, stick pole in and smash down, measure, take pole out if not exact, and either add more rocks/mud or dig it out with your hands.
Lack of comfort aside, though, it was a week that I'm glad I experienced. Hearing about poverty and seeing it first hand are two completely different things, and I'm pretty sure that the fact that the families we were helping out had to live through worse conditions every day was one of the few things that kept me getting out of bed (or, rather, off of floor) and putting on the same wet clothes every morning.
The first family we worked with was actually an extended family living in three small huts on the same plot of land. The main one belonged to the grandmother and grandfather, and was made of a hodgepodge of wood and rusted tin. The other huts belonged to their children, their spouses, and the grandchildren. These were worse: each was a single-room structure for the whole family and all of their possessions, the walls and ceilings were garbage-bag material propped up by tree branches, there was one mattress for the entire family, and the floors were simply mud. There was no running water (only what could be pulled up from the ground), and the toilet was a box with a hole in it. We had three separate groups of about seven volunteers building this family three new houses over the first three or so days of the week.
The second family lived on the other side of town, but faced similar conditions. Their house was slightly larger, but it was still essentially one large room with blankets separating the different sections. From my count, there were at least seven people living here: mother, father, four children aged 3-18 (or thereabouts), and the infant son of the 18 year old girl. Their yard was almost entirely flooded out from the rain, and they told us (after we had made the mistake of washing ourselves off in it) that the water was probably contaminated with whatever had gone into their toilet, which once again was a hole in the ground.
The first family we worked with was actually an extended family living in three small huts on the same plot of land. The main one belonged to the grandmother and grandfather, and was made of a hodgepodge of wood and rusted tin. The other huts belonged to their children, their spouses, and the grandchildren. These were worse: each was a single-room structure for the whole family and all of their possessions, the walls and ceilings were garbage-bag material propped up by tree branches, there was one mattress for the entire family, and the floors were simply mud. There was no running water (only what could be pulled up from the ground), and the toilet was a box with a hole in it. We had three separate groups of about seven volunteers building this family three new houses over the first three or so days of the week.
The second family lived on the other side of town, but faced similar conditions. Their house was slightly larger, but it was still essentially one large room with blankets separating the different sections. From my count, there were at least seven people living here: mother, father, four children aged 3-18 (or thereabouts), and the infant son of the 18 year old girl. Their yard was almost entirely flooded out from the rain, and they told us (after we had made the mistake of washing ourselves off in it) that the water was probably contaminated with whatever had gone into their toilet, which once again was a hole in the ground.
The huts at the first site we worked on.The homes we built weren’t anything amazing. They were probably about 15 feet long and 8 feet wide, a door, two windows, a tin roof to keep the rain out, and (something we often take for granted) a floor. In the US, this is more like a large tool shed, but this was a huge step up for these families, and provided them with an opportunity to make their lives just a little bit better.
A few of the countless moments, some good, some bad:
- As we enter the seventh hour of work in the pouring rain of the first day, I start to question the worth of my (or any) college degree. Working with the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan college students of our group has proved difficult due to language issues, and the four college-educated Americans and one medical school student from New Zealand are currently digging rocks out of the dirt road that leads to our family's huts using shovels and long metal poles. Taking directions on how to dig holes and precisely level the foundation columns in Spanish was way over my head, so I relegated myself to rock-digging duty, as we needed baseball sized rocks to steady the pillars we placed into the field of mud we were building on. Twenty years of education, some of which I'll be paying off well into my thirties, and I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to pry a rock out of a dirt road with a shovel. As we improve at our craft - I'm soon able to unearth rocks with a quick flick of the wrists - we start to make light of the situation, calling each other "rock stars," singing any song that has the word 'rock' in it (a variation of The Police's "Roxanne" - appropriately reworded and renamed to "Rocksanne" - was a favorite), and making any pun about rocks that we could think of. The rain doesn't seem as hard, and we feel validated by our menial yet necessary work. You know the old saying about having to work your way from the ground up? Literal application here.
A few of the countless moments, some good, some bad:
- As we enter the seventh hour of work in the pouring rain of the first day, I start to question the worth of my (or any) college degree. Working with the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan college students of our group has proved difficult due to language issues, and the four college-educated Americans and one medical school student from New Zealand are currently digging rocks out of the dirt road that leads to our family's huts using shovels and long metal poles. Taking directions on how to dig holes and precisely level the foundation columns in Spanish was way over my head, so I relegated myself to rock-digging duty, as we needed baseball sized rocks to steady the pillars we placed into the field of mud we were building on. Twenty years of education, some of which I'll be paying off well into my thirties, and I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to pry a rock out of a dirt road with a shovel. As we improve at our craft - I'm soon able to unearth rocks with a quick flick of the wrists - we start to make light of the situation, calling each other "rock stars," singing any song that has the word 'rock' in it (a variation of The Police's "Roxanne" - appropriately reworded and renamed to "Rocksanne" - was a favorite), and making any pun about rocks that we could think of. The rain doesn't seem as hard, and we feel validated by our menial yet necessary work. You know the old saying about having to work your way from the ground up? Literal application here.
Yeah, that'd be me moving a house BY MYSELF.- Of the approximately 120 people that signed up for the week, I’m pretty sure that I was the least prepared. We received a list of items that we needed to bring, and for the most part they ranged from the expensive (a hammer and sleeping bag) to the inane (a single can of tuna). Instead of, you know, heeding the advice of the people who run these trips for a living, I decide to set my trip budget at about $6 and hope for the best. Besides the clothes that I brought along, I end up securing an inexpensive hammer and tape measure, both of low quality but packaged together for savings. I also obtain a pillow when I take the liberty of taking one out on long-term loan from the hostel I stayed at the night before, rationalized by the fact that they did not have the mechanical bull they had promised in my travel guide. I decide that expensive items like a sleeping bag and work gloves are not worth the investment, and that if my survival comes down to a single can of tuna, I’m sure that the US Embassy would already be on its way to pick me up. I do, however, buy a tube of pizza-flavored Pringles… because they’re friggin’ amazing.
In any event, upon arriving I find out that I’m the only one of the 120 who didn’t bring anything to sleep in. No worries, though. I decide that I can resort to begging as the stupid American, or at the very least sleep under a towel until someone takes pity on me. In a country with fully socialized health care, I figure that there’s no way they let me go blanketless.
I turn out to be 100% right. I ask one of the leaders of the trip (who speaks good but not perfect English) about acquiring some sleeping materials, and she assures me that “there are many nice people who will want to sleep with you.” Assuming that something got lost in translation, I head back to my room, and within five minutes someone shows up to offer me a blanket. Later on that night, some kind soul drops by to lend me their extra air mattress. How anyone managed to have an ‘extra’ air mattress is beyond me, but unfortunately I had fallen asleep about five minutes prior and did not receive their offer face-to-face. My friend and fellow volunteer, Jimi, takes it on my behalf and lightly taps my back in an “attempt” to wake me up. I do, ask him what the tap was for, and he flat out ignores me. Thinking I was mistaken, I fall back asleep. I awake the next morning to the sound of Jimi snoring, entrenched in a deep sleep on an air mattress that had magically appeared during the night.
Yup.
- I’m more prepared for the second day than the first. Having ruined my shorts, socks, and only pair of sneakers in the four inches of mud that was more accurately described as slushy brown superglue, I had trekked into town the night before to buy a pair of $7 rubber boots. Oh… and a supply of chocolate cookies called “Chikys” and Pringle knock-offs called “Kryzpos,” which came in a tube so large that it could fit most Civil War era cannonballs.
After lugging our equipment through the driving rain on the 20 minute walk to the building site, the rubber boots were already tearing through my skin and causing blisters on any portion of my lower legs that are not covered by socks. Which, of course, is every portion of my lower legs, because I had decided that morning that putting on socks would be a huge waste of time now that I was equipped with my incredible new waterproof boots. Having nature as my only resource to remedy this problem, I stuff my boots with some large palm leaves that I found growing next to our building site, and they act as the world’s cheapest, most ridiculous looking socks. Ranking myself somewhere between Lewis and Clark on the list of history’s greatest survivalists, my inflated ego and I are prepared for another long day in the rain.
I spent a few minutes pretending to understand instructions on how to level the posts, then sent myself off once again to dig rocks with the other gringos. I work at a furious pace, desperate to prove that my rock digging was just as important as building the actual house. All this determination manages to tire me out in about two hours, and suddenly I was searching for motivation to get through the other eight hours left in our day.
As my pace dwindled, a group of five children approached from down the street. The rain had let up a bit, allowing those sane enough to have stayed inside for the past couple of hours to come out. They were clearly from this same poor neighborhood: none of them were wearing shoes, their clothes were dirty and torn, and most of their attire was ill-fitting, clearly handed down from an older sibling but not yet grown into. The oldest one, who introduced himself as Chris, tried to start up a conversation with me but quickly realized that I couldn’t understand his breakneck pace. After a few mas despacio, por favor’s, he simplified his questions and I let him know what our group was doing, and why the tall, skinny American was stealing rocks from his road. The kids ranged in age from five to twelve, although each looked a good 2-3 years younger than their stated age due to the sad fact that the lack of food in these parts stunts the children’s growth.
Chris started our new, slower conversation by asking me if I was from the United States. I replied that I was. His first guess at my city of residence was Paris, but I had to break the news that I was from the slightly less exciting (but slightly more American) city of Boston. He looked puzzled, I told him it was cerca de New York, mas o menos, and he seemed satisfied. By this time, my fellow Gringa Jen made her way over. Jen had already taught in Costa Rica for a year, so she was able to carry on a more substantial conversation with the kids. She explained her job for the morning, which was carrying the dug up rocks back to the house site in a vegetable sack.
Without being asked, all five kids immediately started picking up the rocks I had dug up and placed them in the bag. They continued to do this, run after run, sometimes hovering over my shovel to fight for the right to pick up the next rock. My pace picked up, half strengthened by their enthusiasm for such a tedious task, the other half out of fear of embarrassment of being the white dude who can barely speak and can’t keep up with a bunch of kids. Before long, we’d stockpiled enough rocks to last the morning. I broke open my stash of Chikys to share with our helpers for a job well done, feeling selfish that I ever intended to eat all of them in a neighborhood where food isn’t a given. They happily took the treats, then scampered off as the rain picked back up, assuring that the rest of our rock-hunting wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
--
Up until the week in Batan, I had been living a relatively sheltered life in Orosi, which is mostly middle class and full of people that are used to Americans. It was while I was delivering walls and floors to the different sites on the back of a pickup truck that it finally hit me that I was in Costa Rica. As we crept along the pothole-filled roads trying to dodge tree branches and keep the hundreds of pounds of wood from falling over and crushing us, one of the leaders of the project, a girl named Luli, talked to me about the impact Un Techo Para Mi Pais has already had, and what its future goals were. They’ve built hundreds of houses in Costa Rica already (and thousands in surrounding Latin American countries), but a ton of work still needs to be done. Luckily, they seem to be gaining popularity, especially with the more educated and well off university students of San Jose. I’m glad I was able to make a contribution, however small, to their cause, even if it meant washing myself in an outdoor sink every night.
After lugging our equipment through the driving rain on the 20 minute walk to the building site, the rubber boots were already tearing through my skin and causing blisters on any portion of my lower legs that are not covered by socks. Which, of course, is every portion of my lower legs, because I had decided that morning that putting on socks would be a huge waste of time now that I was equipped with my incredible new waterproof boots. Having nature as my only resource to remedy this problem, I stuff my boots with some large palm leaves that I found growing next to our building site, and they act as the world’s cheapest, most ridiculous looking socks. Ranking myself somewhere between Lewis and Clark on the list of history’s greatest survivalists, my inflated ego and I are prepared for another long day in the rain.
I spent a few minutes pretending to understand instructions on how to level the posts, then sent myself off once again to dig rocks with the other gringos. I work at a furious pace, desperate to prove that my rock digging was just as important as building the actual house. All this determination manages to tire me out in about two hours, and suddenly I was searching for motivation to get through the other eight hours left in our day.
As my pace dwindled, a group of five children approached from down the street. The rain had let up a bit, allowing those sane enough to have stayed inside for the past couple of hours to come out. They were clearly from this same poor neighborhood: none of them were wearing shoes, their clothes were dirty and torn, and most of their attire was ill-fitting, clearly handed down from an older sibling but not yet grown into. The oldest one, who introduced himself as Chris, tried to start up a conversation with me but quickly realized that I couldn’t understand his breakneck pace. After a few mas despacio, por favor’s, he simplified his questions and I let him know what our group was doing, and why the tall, skinny American was stealing rocks from his road. The kids ranged in age from five to twelve, although each looked a good 2-3 years younger than their stated age due to the sad fact that the lack of food in these parts stunts the children’s growth.
Chris started our new, slower conversation by asking me if I was from the United States. I replied that I was. His first guess at my city of residence was Paris, but I had to break the news that I was from the slightly less exciting (but slightly more American) city of Boston. He looked puzzled, I told him it was cerca de New York, mas o menos, and he seemed satisfied. By this time, my fellow Gringa Jen made her way over. Jen had already taught in Costa Rica for a year, so she was able to carry on a more substantial conversation with the kids. She explained her job for the morning, which was carrying the dug up rocks back to the house site in a vegetable sack.
Without being asked, all five kids immediately started picking up the rocks I had dug up and placed them in the bag. They continued to do this, run after run, sometimes hovering over my shovel to fight for the right to pick up the next rock. My pace picked up, half strengthened by their enthusiasm for such a tedious task, the other half out of fear of embarrassment of being the white dude who can barely speak and can’t keep up with a bunch of kids. Before long, we’d stockpiled enough rocks to last the morning. I broke open my stash of Chikys to share with our helpers for a job well done, feeling selfish that I ever intended to eat all of them in a neighborhood where food isn’t a given. They happily took the treats, then scampered off as the rain picked back up, assuring that the rest of our rock-hunting wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
--
Up until the week in Batan, I had been living a relatively sheltered life in Orosi, which is mostly middle class and full of people that are used to Americans. It was while I was delivering walls and floors to the different sites on the back of a pickup truck that it finally hit me that I was in Costa Rica. As we crept along the pothole-filled roads trying to dodge tree branches and keep the hundreds of pounds of wood from falling over and crushing us, one of the leaders of the project, a girl named Luli, talked to me about the impact Un Techo Para Mi Pais has already had, and what its future goals were. They’ve built hundreds of houses in Costa Rica already (and thousands in surrounding Latin American countries), but a ton of work still needs to be done. Luckily, they seem to be gaining popularity, especially with the more educated and well off university students of San Jose. I’m glad I was able to make a contribution, however small, to their cause, even if it meant washing myself in an outdoor sink every night.
Three new houses built for the first family.
Opening ceremony for our first house. Hasta luego.
