A Wonderful Back Breaking Day

We began the day at 7:00am with breakfast and then walked to the worksite. It is about 15 minutes from the hotel(on the way there... about 30 minutes on the way home). To the Nicaraguans we imagine we are quite a sight to see. 10 people obviously not from Nicaragua hauling suitcases with tools, backpacks, water bottles and obviously excited. It didn't take long before we decided to send the tools by taxi to the sight. It cost less then a dollar for the taxi.



When we got to the site our supplies were there and they kept coming all day. The most amazing part of this was how it is delivered. We carry it all or shovel it all. So three loads of blocks came and carried them. 30 bags of cement came and we carried all of them. Two truck loads of dirt arrived and they were hand shovelled by the delivery company. It is an incredible amount of work with little mechanization.


The stats as given to me(Doug) by John Burns are:

• About 15 tonnes of dirt shovelled and hauled.
• Dozens of wheel barrels of sand sifted.
• 5 tonnes or so of cement and morter mixed by hand and hauled in 5 gallon buckets.
• 7 rows of 6" block laid. Each row had about 29 blocks
• 4 bags of matchbox cars given to the kids.
• 2 30 foot forms built and filled with cement
• 15 minutes of Doug trying to learn a spanish word that means good afternoon. Finally his tutor(a nine year old girl) gave up.

Immediately upon our arrival kids started to gather. We were impressed with all of them but we were especially impressed with two - Helena and Anna. These two girls helped us all day long and knew how to both work hard and hold their own. We took to calling Anna the Grand Marshall.







We were impacted by several physically disabled kids who were on the work site and helped us as they could. One of the them was obviously unable to walk or move his arms. He sat in a home made wheel chair(A plastic lawn chair with wheels screwed onto it). He was a lot of fun. He would sit near where we were sifting sand and both talk and tease the ladies as they put the sand through the sifting screen. He won our hearts in a lot of ways.
Roy met a man at the end of the day who took him on a brief tour of his home. Tomorrow he is going on a tour of the full house and is going to try and invite him to the Iglesia Evangelica of Esteli for church. Through out the day we met a number of other people who had lived as illegals in the United States before coming home. And one of our team members was asked by a worker for help in getting to the US. It is sad. To see both the level of poverty and the desire for what we have and yet the inability to make it happen for so many different reasons.

They other thing that impacted us was the way we were served by the church at Esteli. A new woman to the church - Betty worked with us and then served us an incredible snack at about 10:30 that we thought was lunch. At about 1:00 another person showed up with an incredible meal. She went so far as to wash the lettuce in Chlorine so that we could eat it. Incredible thoughtfulness from people who have so much less than we do.

By the end of the day we had accomplished a lot and had a lot of fun in the process. We built a wall and served lots of kids. It was a wonderful day...albeit a little back breaking.