June 20, 2007

Hello

¿Cómo les va? Things are going alright here.

I am not sure what to blog about…it seems like quite a bit has happened since the last time I blogged. One thing I had wanted to blog about was an addition to Annie’s blog about Honduras and the “slower pace of life” here. I wanted to write a little something to demonstrate that while things here are slow there are still plenty of people working very hard.

The first example of this I saw in a community JAM is working with, a couple hours drive from El Paraíso. I went with one of the técnicos to visit the caja toma (small damn) that the community had constructed in the mountains to check and make sure everything was done according to plan. We walked uphill for about 2 hours from the last passable road to get to the caja toma, and it was a well built concrete structure. About 3 yards of concrete went into the whole thing, all of the materials for which were carried along the same route we had taken to get there. It’s not an easy hike even when you’re just carrying water, let alone a 80 lb sack of cement. Anyhow, after we got back to the community about 8 guys were unloading bricks to build the water tank, and there was a guy there helping that everyone was joking with and having a good time. He was one of the roughest looking fellows I have ever seen, unloading bricks with no shoes on, he maybe had half his teeth, and on a good day weighed 115 lbs. He looked as if he had spent the majority of his life drunk, and probably had. My first thought was that someone grabbed him and told him they would give him a cigarette if he helped unload bricks. But after awhile one of the guys started telling me the story of how this guy who had maybe never owned a pair of shoes, lived in the community, was a pretty friendly guy, and was helping construct the system voluntarily (no one gets paid, all of the community members do their part to construct the entire system). And when they had started the caja toma, up on the mountain, this guy had grabbed the first bag of cement and walked uphill without stopping to rest the entire way to the construction site. It had taken me 2 hours to walk that far and I stopped to rest twice… this guy did it carrying nearly his weight in cement on his shoulders.

The next example came when Annie and I were talking with a group of guys in a community a ways north of Danlí about the possibility of working towards another system in their area. I was explaining that it would be possible to start the process, but I emphasized that the community needed to really be ready for a lot of work because they would have to provide all of the labor, and there would be plenty. They sort of chuckled and looked at each other and told me that when they had done the system for the first community they trenched and buried 30 kilometers of pipe a meter underground, by hand.

1 comment:

Lora said...

Makes you think twice about our culture's work ethic.