Trip 1 Day 1

Day ONE of Trip One is now in the books! We have successfully completed the foundation for the house that we are constructing! However, before I get into what we did today, I would like to briefly describe our tedious journey to Antigua.

Myself and several other Guatemala bound students decided we would leave Clemson at around 2:30 in the morning, Sunday morning. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 7:30 and we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to check in. After meeting up and driving 2 and a half hours, at 2:30 in the morning, with 5 guys in a small car, in pouring rain, we finally made it to the airport, joined up with our last conrade, and made it though all security without causing any big scenes. We flew from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale, sat around for a little, then flew down to Guatemala City. It was approximately a 2 hour drive from Guatemala City to Antigua, where we are staying while we are down here. To sum it up, it was a lot of traveling with more or less no sleep, so we were pretty exhausted. That all changed however when we opened the door to the villa that we are staying in!

Upon arriving at our new home for the week, I was pretty surprised to see the 2 security guarded gates we had to go through. I participated in this trip last year and there were no guarded gates then. Upon opening the door to our new home, I was in complete disbelief at what we were expected to live in! There is a very nice courtyard inside the outer wall with a fountain, a laundry room, a very pretty foyer, and the door to the house. Inside the house we found, individual bedrooms for every person, some of the biggest and most luxurious beds I have ever seen, a full blown living room, dining room, and kitchen, plus a room with a fountain in it. Not to mention, we have OUR OWN POOL AND HOT TUB! Lets just say it's one of the nicest places I have EVER stayed, and I have been to some nice places! And as far as security goes, in order to get into our place, one would have to get through 2 guarded gates, barbed wire around the entire top of the house, and 2 locked doors. If this isn't secure, I don't know what is!

I know what your thinking; this is a mission trip. We should not be living in luxury. According to Fred, when you look at how much it would cost to rent hotel rooms for everyone that we are sending down there (20 total) it was much cheaper to split the cost of a villa for a month. Not a bad move Fred!

The rest of Monday was composed of getting supplies from the super market for lunches for ourselves and the family we were going to help, eating, and then much needed sleep! Since we were tired, hungry, and in no mood to wait, we decided to hit up the local McDonald's for lunch, which is the most beautiful McDonald's you will ever see. We had diner at a fine little restaurant that had mostly Mexican and American food. All in all, not a bad day.

The next day, Tuesday, we woke up at 8, made some lunches, and waited for the From Houses to Home people to pick us up. They came around 9:15, took us to their office, then we were San Antonio something (real name to come later) bound. We ended up pulling over on the side of some road and and following our foremen from Houses to Homes up some steep path though all these huts. Most of the huts were made out of a combination of bamboo, other sticks, and steel sheeting. After a long and arduous climb, we finally made it to the family's place that we were there to help. It turns out the the family is comprised of a single mother with either 4 or 5 kids (kids were always coming and going) living in a bamboo house which was comprised of 2 rooms. In one room, there was 2 beds right next to one another, and the second room looked to be more or less for eating. The bed room was obviously the larger of the two rooms, and even it looked to be no bigger than 12 ft by 10 ft.

The story of the family is just about as rough as the house they were living in. The woman used to be married, however her husband turned out to be abusive to her and her kids, so they had him thrown in jail. He is now in jail for 5 years. In order for From Houses to Homes to build a house from her, she had to have her papers, identifying that the land belonged to her. Since she lived at her husband's house, she was forced to move and buy her own property so that she would be eligible to receive help. So, this single woman, with no job and no money, bought her own land, built a house on it, and takes care of her children there. By the way, the youngest one is just a new born! And to top it all off, I have never seen people so happy and eager to help. It really makes you think about how much we have and yet, how unhappy we can sometimes be.

As far as today's work goes, today was foundation day. We started by helping our two foremen cut rebar, put up strings, and make sure everything else was ready to go. We then proceeded to dig, sometimes as much as 3 to 4 feet down, to be able to pour concrete and set up a sturdy foundation. The problem turned out to be the soil. Since we were literally on the side of a mountain, the only flat ground was cut out of the mountainside. As we attempted to dig next to this big wall of dirt, the extremely loose soil continuously rained down into our hole, sometimes in large landslides. I felt like I dug that thing out 10 times over by the time we were done, but we made it. After we dug out the trench, we made concrete on the ground using gallon buckets and our eyes to determine how much sand, gravel, cement, and water to add. We then poured the gravel and let it set. Before calling it a day, we carried 100 cinder blocks up the hill to the location. Not exactly my idea of a cool down, but we will need them tomorrow. Tomorrow we will start building the walls. I can't wait until it starts to look like a house!

- Patrick Needham