Guatemala: Tuesday Recap

Our team split again today to work on the home for Ana and her family and to install another smokeless stove.

Eight members of our team finished tying the rebar to reinforce the walls of the home today as well as mixed and moved and poured 8 inches of concrete for the foundation. They worked hard and were also able to afford the time to play with the kids. They loved the bubbles a team member brought! The kids also led them on an adventure to see where they harvest strawberries and cabbage.

Today I and 3 other members of our team had the privilege of working in a home to install another smokeless stove/healthy home kit. We were joined by our field coordinator, Kayla, and Samuel, a Habitat Guatemala staff member.

We ventured a little farther out to do the stoves than where the home is being built, but the drive is a part of the day I enjoy. Getting to see the landscape and the different communities are a perk of a long drive. And the landscape here is beautiful. We are working at about 7,000-8,000 feet elevation and there are beautiful vistas around every curve.

The smokeless stoves are fairly simple, but a life changing home addition for these families. If there are not teams to build the stoves, the women in the community will build them. There is a promoter who works with Habitat to encourage more people in the community to install the stoves. Once enough interest is met they will bring in one Habitat staff to help with the process. They make their own adobe bricks and allow them to dry the proper amount of time and then build their stoves. Each family pays a portion of the cost of around $20 American dollars for their stove.

Today we were honored to help speed that process.

The first tasks of the day were mixing mud/mortar and hauling 35-40 adobe bricks to the home we would build a stove in. Our leader, Samuel, got us started on the first layer to make sure things were even and level then we were put to work to build the stove!

Stove building here involved a lot of mudslinging and lifting heavy blocks. It’s pretty much grown up Legos or Lincoln Logs! It is amazing that something as simple as a stove can change a family’s life and future for about $100 American dollars and about 6 hours of labor to build once the adobe bricks are ready.

We spent the morning making the base layer of the stove, but a break is needed to let things settle and dry a little. During our break we went for a walk through the community. We stopped by a home to purchase frozen chocolate dipped bananas. They were a treat and only cost .75q! That is less than 10 cents. On the break we also saw coffee beans on their branches, bananas in their bunches, and limes and oranges on their trees! What a beautiful and bountiful landscape this is.

For lunch we had another delicious meal and enjoyed fresh tortillas from the stove the family now uses. If you have never had a fresh corn tortilla, you are missing out! Hopefully we will get a lesson on making them this week. You can hear the clapping sound of making tortillas all over here. What a neat local commodity!

After the break we filled the walls of the stove with dirt on which we would lay the bricks for the stove. The pipe that will be finished in 2 weeks was also put in place. (The pipe is not completed on the main build day so that it discourages use until the stove has had time to dry out.)  Once done laying bricks and placing the pipe we put the stainless steel cooktop on, Samuel finished the last layer of concrete to make the smokeless stove complete (almost).

We were able to celebrate the new stove with the woman who will be using it! What a gift!

Such a simple task and process, but a world of difference for the health of the family. The smoke will now go out of the house when cooking, they won’t be cooking on open fire, and they will use less wood (saving them money and the local trees).  It is a true privilege to see a need met and to work with your hands, seeing a finished product at the end of the day.

After our work day, we enjoyed our drive back comparing Habitat stories and watching the scenery go by. We also got to stop for ice cream! I opted for the galleto (cookie) ice creams dipped in chocolate with nuts on top. It was delicious!

We are now back at the hotel and showered off after the mudslinging and looking forward to what we might enjoy for dinner.

This week is going by much too quickly and we are all enjoying every minute of it.

Tomorrow will be a similar task set up with an adventure to see Mayan ruins in the late afternoon!

Until then…