Saturday, April 7, 2012
The faces in Nicaragua
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
The photos you have been waiting for!!!
Wow! Powerful, overwhelming, meaningful, heart opening and heart breaking, we have a thousand stories to tell at least. Lives are changed, here and there!
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Flight Cancellation
We were so thrilled to be welcoming the GET group home tonight, however we have recently learned that Flight UA 5491 from Chicago has been cancelled. The group has received vouchers for hotel accommodations & meals and they should hopefully arrive home tomorrow around supper time. We hope that they enjoy the extra day and that they have the chance to see some of Chicago!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Hot, Hot, Hot
People tell you it{s hot in Nicaragua, but until you walk the walk, you don{t really know what they mean. Heat has been a challenge for many in the group, but all are making brave efforts to be in the work groups as they can. Each day we have to check on have members had their water, wearing a hat, wearing gloves, wearing dust protection, protection for eyes. Some days I feel a little like a mother hen, checking on the chicks.
Today is our last day at the projects, and they will be making a farewell party for us this afternoon. I expect lots of tears, hugs and pictures. Hard to believe we will not be back in Anexo or Gabriela Mistral school again. I will miss the children, the workers, and the English students.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Another amazing day in Managua!!
Hola!
What a remarkable day! I have been working on building the Techo house for a family living in Anexo in Barrio Grenada. Don Job, Dona Lurcretia and their children Stefanie, Darlene and baby Jocelyn live in an extremely poor area of Managua. We started working on their home yesterday and it took only 75 minutes to completely remove everything that they own from the house and to tear the structure down. The house was built from pieces of wood and rusted tin hammered together. The part of that process that hit me was seeing their beds. Two metal bed frames with pieces of card board on top comprised their beds and mattresses. I cannot imagine what they would think if they saw my Queen size bed with a very thick mattress. The whole family lived in a space comparable to the size of my bedroom at home.
Yesterday was a dirty, dusty day. After tearing down the house and beginning to work on the temporary shelter for the family, we came back from lunch and started working on setting the posts ("pilotes") that would support the floor of the Techo house. What dirty, sweaty work! We would take metal poles and dig as far as possible into the dirt and then use plastic containers to scoop out the loose dirt. The holes had to be about two feet deep... man it was a lot of digging and scooping! Then we had to set the pilotes with rocks and more dirt. It also took a very long time to level everything to make sure that the house would sit properly once it was built. I was absolutely filthy when we stopped for the day yesterday!!
Today, we managed to not only finish putting in the pilotes, but we started construction on the house itself. We started by positioning the pieces that make up the floor. I then got the fun job of crawling under the house and hammering the pieces together. I have a bit of a problem with claustophobia, so it took me two or three minutes to get to the right spot, but it felt so good to overcome a fear and be the only Canadian member of our team to complete the task.
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Ezekiel, Brigitte, Parales and Johnathon.
After that, I managed to scrape my arm on the barbed wire fence that divides their yard from the neighbours and had to get it checked out by the doctors at the school site. Dr. Wang cleaned it up for me and put on quite the bandage to protect it from the dust!! When I came back, almost all four walls of the house were put up!! Katelynn, Robert and Julia were in the middle of it all, hammering away at nails and getting everything into place!!
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It looks like we're going to finish the house tomorrow, which is way ahead of our timeline of being finished by Thursday afternoon!! The next steps are putting up the roof and moving the family into their new home!!
Another fantastic part of my day was receiving a party hat and friendship poem from the two girls who live in the house I'm building. They are such beautiful, smart girls and I'm so thankful to have met them. They both get right into the work; digging holes, smashing rocks, hammering nails or doing anything else that needs to be done... and they are 14 and 11 years old. I really hope that the work I'm doing here will have a positive impact on their lives. This is getting long, so I will save stories about the family members themselves for another day.
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Stefanie, Brigitte, Darlene
Thanks for reading!
Brigitte
What a remarkable day! I have been working on building the Techo house for a family living in Anexo in Barrio Grenada. Don Job, Dona Lurcretia and their children Stefanie, Darlene and baby Jocelyn live in an extremely poor area of Managua. We started working on their home yesterday and it took only 75 minutes to completely remove everything that they own from the house and to tear the structure down. The house was built from pieces of wood and rusted tin hammered together. The part of that process that hit me was seeing their beds. Two metal bed frames with pieces of card board on top comprised their beds and mattresses. I cannot imagine what they would think if they saw my Queen size bed with a very thick mattress. The whole family lived in a space comparable to the size of my bedroom at home.
Yesterday was a dirty, dusty day. After tearing down the house and beginning to work on the temporary shelter for the family, we came back from lunch and started working on setting the posts ("pilotes") that would support the floor of the Techo house. What dirty, sweaty work! We would take metal poles and dig as far as possible into the dirt and then use plastic containers to scoop out the loose dirt. The holes had to be about two feet deep... man it was a lot of digging and scooping! Then we had to set the pilotes with rocks and more dirt. It also took a very long time to level everything to make sure that the house would sit properly once it was built. I was absolutely filthy when we stopped for the day yesterday!!
Today, we managed to not only finish putting in the pilotes, but we started construction on the house itself. We started by positioning the pieces that make up the floor. I then got the fun job of crawling under the house and hammering the pieces together. I have a bit of a problem with claustophobia, so it took me two or three minutes to get to the right spot, but it felt so good to overcome a fear and be the only Canadian member of our team to complete the task.
After that, I managed to scrape my arm on the barbed wire fence that divides their yard from the neighbours and had to get it checked out by the doctors at the school site. Dr. Wang cleaned it up for me and put on quite the bandage to protect it from the dust!! When I came back, almost all four walls of the house were put up!! Katelynn, Robert and Julia were in the middle of it all, hammering away at nails and getting everything into place!!
It looks like we're going to finish the house tomorrow, which is way ahead of our timeline of being finished by Thursday afternoon!! The next steps are putting up the roof and moving the family into their new home!!
Another fantastic part of my day was receiving a party hat and friendship poem from the two girls who live in the house I'm building. They are such beautiful, smart girls and I'm so thankful to have met them. They both get right into the work; digging holes, smashing rocks, hammering nails or doing anything else that needs to be done... and they are 14 and 11 years old. I really hope that the work I'm doing here will have a positive impact on their lives. This is getting long, so I will save stories about the family members themselves for another day.
Stefanie, Brigitte, Darlene
Thanks for reading!
Brigitte
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