sedativegunk

Day 1

The title of this post is the slogan for Habitat for Humanity in El Salvador. It means “Do something concrete”. It’s Monday and we volunteers arrive at the work site ready to do just that. Unlike other builds I’ve been on, the entire team’s efforts will be devoted to working on one house as opposed to splitting our time on multiple houses. So we expect to make a lot of progress. We get off the bus and, while checking out the site and getting our first work briefing, we are struck by the quaintness of the surroundings. The property is located just outside of the town of Usulutan in the middle of a cornfield on a dirt road. Roosters crow at nothing in particular. In the distance a large inactive volcano plays with the clouds like something from a postcard. The picturesque spot inspires a good day’s work.

Our first day is spent doing three tasks: mixing concrete, digging a septic pit and preparing re-bar that will reinforce the concrete blocks shell of the house. We’re building in a highly active seismic zone so the re-bar is key addition to the construction. Under the supervision of the masons who are paid local employees of the project, we mix batch after batch of cement until the base is complete. And no, there is no cement truck and no cement mixer – other than the human kind armed with a shovel:

And we work under the watchful eye of Octavio, the neighbour’s parakeet:

Once the concrete base is complete we begin digging the septic pit. Unlike many of the other houses I’ve worked on for Habitat, this house will have an indoor toilet with a septic pit behind the house. The pit must be 3 metres x 2 metres and 2 metres deep. Fortunately the ground is soft and we’re able to make fairly rapid progress through the afternoon. By the way, shout out to my team mates as some of these photos are actually from their collection.

The neighbours next door are a young family who, we would soon find out, have rolled out the welcome mat to Jorge, Mirna and the kids. They run a business in selling fresh tortillas in town and they are quite successful at it. The workday ends with the volunteers and the family meeting at the neighbours’ house for a little birthday celebration for Jorge Sr. and we have a birthday cake for the occasion.

Hopped up on cake and high from the satisfaction that we got through the first day unscathed, we return back to our motel for the dinner and an early sleep.