David and Jeffry hauling lumber.
I just finished up a great week here in Santa Cruz. This past week I had a lot going on with a partnership between Peace Corps and Habitat for Humanity. Last Sunday a group of 9 arrived from the States to take part in a new type of "Exposure Trip" that Habitat is trying out. The group came to learn about the problem with housing here in Costa Rica, to help with the building of a Habitat house and also to help local Peace Corps Volunteers with their current projects. This is where I came in. We had a nice welcome dinner in Nicoya (about 30 minutes south of my town) on Sunday evening where we met all of the people involved. On Tuesday we all worked on the building of a house in another town about 30 minutes from my town in the opposite direction of Nicoya. That was a tough, hot day but it was really fun getting to know Bill, Sheri, Jon, Colleen, Kate, Rosie, Ian, David and Nicola. We moved two big piles of rocks and about 30 slabs of concrete wall closer to the work site in the blazing sun. It was a tough job but somebody had to do it. The next day, the group, including the group leaders, Kelly and Maribeth came to work in my albergue. This is where my greatest happiness took place. In the 5 hours that they were there, they scrubbed outside walls in the play area that were covered with dirt and crayon, picked up glass, separated good toys from the broken ones (there were very few good toys left in the end), built a roof and door on a storage shed, made a picnic lunch for the kids, paid to have all of the "junk" hauled off to the dump, PLUS they left a bunch of donated gifts for the children. They made such a big change at the orphanage that day that I was just ecstatic and so were all of the little kids. I think the caretakers were really happy to see such an improvement in the state of the albergue as well. It was a wonderful day. Today, I just finished up with a goodbye lunch for the group including slide show and dancing. The entire partnership was a great success and as much as I know the group made a big impact on the albergue, that experience working there made equally as big of an impression on the group. I just want to say a great big MIL GRACIAS to everyone for their time, effort and dedication to the week. You will always be in my heart.
2 comments:
Glad to see Jeffrey got to help, but where's the smile on his face like the one on David's??? You'll have to teach him about smiling when good things happen. I guess he doesn't have too much to be happy about except for the nice PC volunteer who takes digital pictures and movies of him dancing!
Kudos to the Habitat Helpers for doing their good deeds!!!
Looks like good practice for when you get your own "Dirty Old House"
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