Honduras - Day 3 - We worked...

I woke up around 4:50am on Monday morning. The air was heavy with humidity, but the ceiling fan over my bed sent a chill over my body. David was getting up in less than half an hour to take four of the youth to milk cows on the ranch. Part of me thought about getting up and going with him, but all of me wanted to sleep until my alarm would be going at 6:15am.

Unfortunately, my mind never shut itself off and I found myself staring at the ceiling or my eyelids for the next hour and a half. I got out of bed around 6:20am with David changing out of his cow milking clothes and into his work clothes. Tara was already out of the room either at breakfast or getting ready for the day.

Breakfast was at 6:30 and we left for the village at 7:30. I put my work clothes on, grabbed a granola bar, and headed to the dining hall to eat with the rest of the group. The four youth who had milked cows were wide awake and laughing as they discussed how much poop there was in the cattle barn. The other youth dragged in one by one and started to eat their breakfast. After most of them had finished and headed back to the dorms, I walked back to finish getting ready for our first day of work.

Before we left, we all made sure to put on bug spray and fill our water bottles, but sun screen hadn't crossed our minds yet. It was warm on the ranch, but we had yet to see the sun. The back of my neck wouldn't be too thrilled with this decision come Tuesday afternoon.

Our transportation for the week, a blue Mitsubishi van and an off-white Toyota Land Cruiser, pulled up outside our dorms around 7:20. Ali had not arrived yet, so we all hung back waiting for our leader. Once she arrived, we piled in the two vehicles. Nine of us were in the van along with Ali and our driver Ubaldo and the remaining six went in the Land Cruiser with David, our security guard, and the driver (who's name I never got).

The running joke in Honduras is that it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere. Ali had told us it would be 20 minutes to the village, which we thought was actually correct knowing that the village was only 15km away. The drive turned out to be about 45 minutes over the rocky road, but it passed quickly since we were all excited for our first day working in El Rodeo.

We drove through the "larger" town of San Esteban and soon started to turn off the main road onto a small dirt road. We were instantly hit with the site of trash everywhere. Having no sanitary system, the village had dumped all of their trash in a low spot outside of their village. The only days I noticed the trash were on the first and last days that I went to the village.

After driving about half a mile up and down the hilly road, we finally saw our village of El Rodeo. We first saw a house that stood next to the village's soccer field. And then we saw the people.

There are only 75 residents of El Rodeo. On this Monday morning, they were all gathered to welcome us. They stood in three rows, the children in front with the women behind them, and the men scattered across the back row, all smiling as our vans drove up next to them. They had made a sign that said "Bienvenidos Second Presbyterian, Nashville, TN!" We couldn't believe the welcome we were receiving.

As we all excited the bus, not quite sure what was going to happen next, several women from the village shook our hands and greeted us with huge smiles. They had gathered 15 lawn chairs and desks from their homes for us to sit in. We took our seats in their semi-circle and Daisy, the elected leader of the village, began to speak to us, with Ali translating.

She welcomed us so graciously and openly. She told us how excited they were to have us with them for the next four days. We prayed together. And she told us that they had pulled the children out of school for the week so they could spend time in "bible school" with us.

This was something we had not been informed of. We knew that the children only went to school in the morning, so they would be around in the afternoon and we could play with them if we had time, but we had no idea they would be pulled out of school and left in our hands. Tara and I quickly exchanged nervous comments about what we would do with them for the next four days.

After Daisy had finished speaking to us, Tara, our only Spanish speaker, returned the welcome words to the village and thanked them for having us. We then introduced ourselves to the group, with the entire village repeating our names after we said them. Most of our names translated easily to Spanish (They had a Brayan, pronounced just like my name, in the village!), but some of the names had to be slightly changed so the villagers could remember them.

Once we all knew one another, or at least they knew us, the children from the village sang two songs they had learned. We danced along with their hand motions and tried our best to mouth the words with them. After they sang, Ali took a role of the families in the village that we would be working with. She told us the work that we would be doing with each family for the day and asked us to split into our work groups.

We had previously split the youth and adults into three groups, hoping to keep one adult in each group with four youth. But not knowing that we would need a separate group to watch the children, we had to do some quick changing before we went our separate ways. Tara and one of the girls went with the kids, leaving the remaining 13 English speakers to go and work with our new friends.

I took my three youth and we were lead to our work site for the day. There were two homes sitting parallel to one another with unfinished porches waiting on us. The two men we had followed to the homes carried five shovels. They took our backpacks and they began working.

Only knowing very basic Spanish, we were unable to ask them what we could do or volunteer to help. The two men began shoveling dirt out of pile and into a new pile on the ground about 12 feet away. They shoveled in a perfect rhythm, one heavy scoop would be thrown right after the other. We had no idea what they were doing or what we would be doing.

One of the men looked at me at some point and said something in Spanish. Having no idea what he said, I replied with the first thing that came to my mind: "No habla Espanol." A large grin grew on both their faces and the man who spoke to me said, "That's funny," in his strong Honduran accent and continued worked. This was the last time either of these men made any joke about me.

After they had shoveled dirt for some time, one of the men went into the home furthest from us and came back with a bag of concrete mix. They placed the bag on top of the dirt and began to mix them together. They first scooped the dirt from the bottom of the pile to the top. And then they began to turn the entire pile of dirt on top of itself. They slid their shovels under the pile on one side and effortlessly spun the shovel over to mix the dirt and grey, powdered concrete. The entire pile had been turned over in less than three minutes. Once this was finished, they repeated the same process in the opposite direction.

I watched in amazement at how quickly and precise these two men worked with their shovels. They had taken this 300-400lb pile of dirt and concrete mix and mixed it together completely in a matter of minutes as we stood around watching and waiting.

Finally, Ali and Daisy approached our houses. Ali talked to them for a few minutes and then explained to us that they were showing us what we needed to do and we would do the next batch. Knowing that we hadn't done anything wrong was a relief.

One of the women that had been watching us started gathering buckets of water from behind a tree about 30 feet away. A grey tarp was stretched between the tree and another tree close to it. We would later learn that this was the only water source for these two homes; it was their drinking water and the place where they washed both their clothes and themselves.

The men had now spread out their dirt mixture into a large volcano and poured two five-gallon buckets of water. The water sat in the middle of the mix like a man-made reservoir. The slowly began shoveling the dirt from the base of the volcano onto the ridge, making the circle of dirt smaller and smaller with each shovel-full. We stood around and absorbed every move they made, hoping to help as much as we could once our turn arrived.

After several minutes of shoveling the dirt carefully into the water, making sure not to let the ridge of the volcano break, the pile of dirt and water had been turned inside-out. There was no water vi sable and the concrete mix covered the pile completely. After a few seconds break, the two men began rapidly mixing the concrete. As they broke into the pile, small streams of wet concrete began to drain from their pile. They used the sides of their shovels to quickly gather the wet mix and put it back into the pile. After a few minutes of vigorous mixing and stirring, a finished batch of concrete laid on the ground before us.

Within minutes, the four of us were filling buckets and carrying them to the porch at the house next to us. A young man, probably no older than 18, pointed where we should dump each bucket and began smoothing out the poured concrete with a worn trowel. As the first buckets were filled, they were filled to the top of the buckets. Each of these full buckets of wet concrete must have weighed at least 75 pounds. After two or three trips with full buckets, we soon began filling the buckets halfway.

Our first batch of concrete was added to the porch quickly and we all began working on the second batch. One of our youth wanted to throw the dirt from the large pile to the smaller pile, now knowing that you had to add 80 shovels of dirt for each bag of concrete. The second batch we mixed would be a double-batch, so him and our Honduran helper would have to count to 160 together. His first toss landed about four feet short of the pile, which drew laughter from all of us. Unfortunately, his second toss landed in the same spot and one of the men took his shovel out of his hands.

Once the two men had put 160 shovel-fulls of dirt in place, they went into the same house as before and brought back two 100 lb. bags of concrete. I sliced them open with my shovel and we began mixing the pile. After we had mixed the pile initially, I began to turn the pile over with one of the men. As I mixed, carefully turning my shovel to incorporate the mix as best as possible, the two men both said, "Yes, Brian, yes." I was stunned that they remembered my name and even more stunned that they approved of my work so quickly.

After we mixed the pile and we waiting on water, I tried my best to ask their names, uttering a hesitant, "Te llamo?" They knew I didn't speak Spanish, so they didn't complain about my poor attempt to ask their names and graciously responded. Their names were Carlos and Alex. I would later find out that they were brothers. And they would later become my brothers.

Carlos was probably 30 years old, wore jeans, a black t-shirt, and a grey Atlanta Braves cap. His thin, dark goatee stood out on his thin face. Alex wore a tattered reversible basketball jersey and jeans, along with worn loafers and a straw sun hat.

For the next three hours, all we did was mix concrete and carry it to the porch. One of the youth in the group had left to go play with the kids, which was fine since the work was very hard and we had at least 20 children to entertain.

I was so proud of the work that me and the two youth alongside me did that morning. The porch we paved must have been 25 feet long and at least eight feet wide. We mixed at least eight double-batches of concrete to finish the long porch before lunch. As the morning went on, we all became more sure of the work we were doing and our lack of communication was no longer an issue.

After I dumped the last bucket of concrete into the corner of the porch, one of the men who had been watching us work looked at me and said, "Finished." I was thankful that we would finally get a break and even more thankful that lunch would soon be in our hungry bellies.

By this time, Ali, Daisy, Tara, and the youth who had been playing with the kids were sitting on the porch of the house next to where we had been working. I grabbed my water and headed over to talk with them, having finished our work for the morning. Tara and Ali told me that the women had been commenting on what a good worker I was and how strong I was.

Being an overweight, lazy American, this was news to me. I knew I was working hard, but I had no idea that anyone would take notice of my work ethic or strength. I was surprised that they called me strong, something that would continue throughout the whole week, and even felt guilty that I was not in better shape to help them more. Not being someone who takes compliments well, I thanked them graciously and sat down on the porch.

After our short break, we walked about a quarter of a mile to the house where we would eat lunch. The home that we had just finished working on had mud walls and dirt floors. I was surprised to see that the home we lunch was had tile floors, running water, and a bathroom. The chairs that had been brought for us earlier in the morning sat in the front room of the house waiting for us.

Everyone looked tired and dirty after a long morning of work. One of the other groups had poured concrete in an interior room of one of the homes. Another group had started work on a latrine for one family. We were only 1/8th of the way through our working days and we had already accomplished a huge amount of work.

Ali soon brought in tubs of chicken, rice, and tortillas for lunch. Ubaldo stood by the door and opened cold, refreshing glass bottles of soda for us. After working tirelessly throughout the morning and not having had a big breakfast, lunch had never tasted more delicious.

As lunch ended, the director of the HOI ranch had come to speak with us. He talked about the villages that they helped, the work the clinic did for the people of Olancho, and the changes he hoped to see made in his time as director. He also talked about the reputation the United States has in the eyes of his people.

He said that the new immigration laws in Arizona and Florida had turned many people off to the United States. He said that many people who had once hoped for the American dream no longer thought it was possible because of these laws. He said that many people who had previously moved to the States to work and send money back home were having to return to Honduras because of economic and political factors.

I was not expecting to hear these kinds of things. I think most Americans think that people in foreign countries, especially in the Third World, all view the United States as perfect and the place where everyone is happy. It's oddly refreshing to know that they have a realistic view of the goings-on in our country at this time.

After the director has finished speaking to us, it was time to continue working. We all remained in our working groups from the morning, returning to our same houses. By the time we had walked back to our worksite, the young man (who we later learned was named Julio) who had been smoothing out the concrete on our porch had finished almost half of our porch. Somehow, he had used his tools to turn the rough concrete into art. The surface was smooth as glass and he threw red and yellow powder on as decoration. It was beautiful.

After a few moments gazing at our accomplishment, we soon began mixing more concrete for an interior room in the house. I'm not sure why we didn't work on the kitchen in the morning and the porch in the afternoon, which would have allowed us to use the doors of the home, but this was the situation we were in.

After mixing the concrete mess, my job for the afternoon would be to lift the 40 pound buckets of concrete through a window four feet off the ground and hand them to the men working inside. Thankfully, this room was about one third the size of the porch we had worked on the in the morning, so our task was not nearly as daunting.

We mixed three or four batches of concrete to fill the deep, uneven kitchen floor and I lifted countless heavy buckets through the window. The man working inside was the same man who had told me our work was "finished" in the morning. With every third or fourth bucket that I handed to him, he spoke the only phrase of English that he knew to me, "What's happening, Brian?!?" This cracked me up every time he said it and he knew it. The laughter helped make the tough work easier.

By the time the concrete slab was almost complete, I was having to hand the buckets to the men standing at the opposite side of the room. Lifting the buckets straight up through the window was hard enough after 40 or 50 buckets, but now having to extend my arms and pass them to the men, knowing that a dropped bucket would cause them to have to redo a large portion of the work, was excrutiating. Thankfully, I only had to pass three or four buckets along in this fashion. I'm also thankful that the buckets we were using had handles on them, as I would later find out that most of the other groups buckets did not, forcing them to bend over and hug each bucket tightly in order to carry it.

Since we would only be working two hours in the afternoon, putting concrete in the kitchen filled the remainder of our work day quickly. Once we were finished, we said goodbye to the men we had been working with and went to meet the rest of the group on the soccer field.

Some of the group was there already laying underneath a small tree for shade. Still having energy left, I pulled a frisbee out of my backpack and had one of the youth run deep onto the field to catch it. We were able to throw the disc for about five minutes amongst one another before Tara and her children surrounded us.

We would throw them the frisbee cautiously, not knowing if they had ever played with a frisbee before, and they would throw it back to us as best they knew how. Their first few throws wobbled and went into the wind, but after five or ten minutes of practice, many of them began throwing the disc accurately and for some distance.

We played with them for about 20 minutes before we left. I stepped in a cow pie as I was running for the disc once. My group laughed at me, but no one from the village said a thing. As the week went on, we realized that manure was a part of their life. The children walked through it barefoot and the women walked around it as if it weren't there.

Before we started to board the bus, one of the children from the village came up to David and said something to him in Spanish. Not understanding him and having been talked to by the same kid three times that afternoon, David asked Tara to translate what he was saying. It turned out that this boy had been suffering from a tooth ache for some time and thought David was a doctor.

David, and most of our group, had worn scrubs to work in since they would keep cool and could be thrown out after getting too dirty. He is also Asian and was carrying our first-aid kit around. Unfortunatly, David is not a doctor, but we were all amused at this child's assumption; this joke would not die throughout the entire week.

After Dr. David had cleared up the situation, we re-boarded our buses and told everyone that we would see them tomorrow. We were tired, dirty, and hungry after our first long day of work. I'm not sure we said more than five words to one another on our way back to the village. But before we had even left the village, we got a flat tire on our bus and had to stop to get it fixed on our way back to the ranch.

We stopped at a service station and all piled out of the van while they repaired our blown tire. I got out of the van and began to survey my surroundings when I saw Alex standing at the repair shop. I'm not sure why he was there, but he walked by me, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Brian!" loudly. I returned the pat and said, "Alex, my man," knowing he couldn't understand what I said to him. It was nice to see him recognize me and be happy to see me after a long day working together.

Once the tire had been repaired, we finished our bumpy ride back to the ranch. We piled out of the vans, thanked Ali and our drivers for their help, and headed off to shower.

The showers at the ranch were the best terrible showers I have ever taken. The shower head was nothing more than a metal hose spout that poured a gently stream of luke-warm water onto my head about an inch away from the dirty shower walls. I was tired and filthy and this bacteria-filled stream of water felt amazing.

After we had all showered, we sat on the porch together discussing our day and waiting for the dinner bell to ring. Once we heard it, we headed to the dining hall and ate another delicious meal of chicken, rice, veggies, beans, and tortillas. After dinner, we stayed in the dining hall and played endless games of cards and Bananagrams.

Once we had our fill of fun, we headed back to our dorms to begin our devotional. Two of the guys in the group led our talk this evening. We shared our pros and cons for the day one by one and then discussed what our expectations were going into the trip and how they had been changed after one day in the village. It was awesome to hear how perceptions had changed after one short day with our new friends.

After several long minutes of too many people talking at once and getting off topic, we reigned in the conversation and decided it was time to pray together. We prayed prayers of thanks for our new friends, prayers for strength for the days to come, and prayers of joy for being with one another. I love when my youth pray (and don't giggle through the entire prayer).

After we prayed, I passed out letters from more members of the church. I think this night's letters were from one of our fellow youth advisors. She wrote Honduras fun facts on each of the youth's cards and also included Spanish stickers for everyone. Tara gathered most of the stickers and they were a huge hit with the children in the village the next day.

Monday evening ended almost like Sunday evening. We all sat on the porch and reflected after a hard, but overwhelmingly rewarding day of work. I think everyone was in bed by 10pm on this night, an odd sight for any youth trip, but a welcome one.

This was the last night I wrote in my journal during our trip. I stopped mid-sentence because I was so tired. I don't remember what I wrote about other than the village welcoming us and the work being so hard. I also wrote about how proud I was of the lack of complaints from our youth. They performed beyond my wildest expectations today. I am so proud. And so tired.