Building houses, and connections

So today half of us went to a house in a suburb of Antigua to work on replacing a house for a family that has two kids in the Escuela Integrada. They lived on a coffee farm but didn’t actually own the land. Our guides for the week, Jessica and Nick, described it to us as that they guarded and protected the land. A wall of foliage surrounded the house so you had no idea what lay behind the door. Driving past it, I didn’t even know there was a house there. The first thing I noticed was that there were no floors and it was dirt everywhere. The houses were made up of corrugated metal for walls and a hanging cloth for a door. They had three dogs and seven puppies. There were three “houses”, one for the grandma, one for the daughter and her children, and a kitchen. Behind where we were building the new house lay what looked like a junkyard. It was a very surreal realization of how they lived. We knew coming into Guatemala that the people here lived in poverty, but it still did not prepare us fully for what we saw. None of mentioned it, but instead greeted the family and got straight to work. We slowly became more comfortable with talking to the family. Despite speaking in broken Spanish, we were able to hold conversations and get to know them, with the help of a Jessica, our translator, of course. Julie brought face paint and there was a swarm of kids and parents alike who all asked for little sketches on their skin. After just sitting down and talking with some of the family for a while we asked if there was anything else we could help them with. They said no, that all they wanted was for us to talk with them. They allowed us to see inside the kitchen and offered us the chairs that they were sitting on. Even though they had so little and they knew we had so much back home they gave up what they had to us and showed off what they had proudly. They asked us all sorts of questions about our lives and Julie, God bless her, even had a talk with a mom about breastfeeding. We connected with them, moving past the language barrier; however, our favorite phrase of the day was asking Jessica how to say different words. It was sad to leave them, knowing that there was still so much more we could do to get to know them and help them.

– Darby