Finishing the House

Our original plan for the Guatemala trip did not include house building, but when you let the Holy Sprit guide you, your plans are never the final word.  Our mission host invited us to help a family at the school that needed a home.  Normally, house built by teams from Escuala Integrada are built on a concrete block, with a simple wooden frame, and corrugated metal roof and siding.  In this case, a concrete slab could not be laid, as the residents did not own the land.  We up from a dirt floor, using as much reclaimed wood and corrugated metal as possible from a previous building on the site. Two local builders, Carlos and Jose, provided expertise, while we mostly provided labor, and tools owned by Escuala Integrada.  We brought shovels, a post-hole-digger (old fashion clam shells) and, best of all, two power drills and five batteries.  Our plan was to build for two half days on Monday and Tuesday morning.  Unfortuantely  the master builder, Carlos found some of the "reclaimed" wood to be unsuitable a wise choice, in my opinion)  Delays in purchasing new lumber led to an extra afternoon at work for four of us
, and a race to complete the project by the end of the day.  Some important lesson about and from the Guatemalan building techniques:

- There are no job site safety standards.  Jose wore dress shoes.  No safety glasses were in evidence.  Ladder techniques  were risky by U.S. standards.

- Trying to limit the purchase of screws to the bare minimum never works.  (We needed two trips for more)

- Wear glove when handling corrugated tin.

- Carlos and Jose believe that the old steel steel siding made in Antigua is far superior to the new imported stuff.

- In any engineering project, the customers are always the same.  The women of the new house insisted we piece together brand new siding for the front of the house.  We were going to use one old piece in the lower left corner, but they were afraid it wouldn't look as nice.  We spent half an hour working out sizes to use only new siding in the front.  In the end, they were right,  the front looked better with  all matching siding.

- You don't really appreciated electricity until you don't have it.  You think you do, but you really don't

- No rechargeable battery last forever.   Or every very long, really

- You can only recharge a battery so much during lunch.

- A dead cordless drill makes a mediocre wrench, but is better than no wrench at all.

In the end, we finished our simple little house by four thirty on Tuesday.  The family was quite pleased with the results, although the were quite basic by our standards.  The home was one room, about 17x25 feet, with a large corrugated clear plastic panel in the roof for light,

 I'm very proud of all our youth, who worked hard, and spent time with the family.  A special shout out to Peyton, who worked all three shifts, digging, carrying, drilling, and smiling.

-Bruce

Jose notches a roof beam with a machete.  Seriously, with a MACHETE!

Setting a roof beam.

More framing

Carlos and Sophie hang siding

Steph checks blood pressure for the family

Mother of the house Maria-Jose, and baby Alex

One wall, almost done

Hannah and Julie hang some siding

Jose works on the roof (roof work, not safe for Bethel)

Builders Jose and Carlos, one of our hosts, Jessica, the Bethel team , and the resident family in front of the finished home.  Note the siding on the front all matches.