A Roof for My Country

Side Effects: An Introduction

Okay, here is the detailed account of my past week´s experience with Un Techo Para Mi País, as promised. Let me begin at the ending because it´s what´s on my mind - or in stomache - at the moment. Yes, here I am sitting in an internet café, trying to type my tale to you on this new fangled international keyboard that I haven´t quite figured out yet, and I am dealing with my first ever Montezuma´s Revenge, ie TD. If you don´t know what I´m talking about, ask one of your friends who´s traveled in any tropical country. I promise you they will have some funny, if still not embarrassing stories to tell.

Had I written this a few hours earlier, the top of my list would have been the fact that I have never been so dirty in my entire life. I still haven´t got the dirt out from beneath my toenails, but after three days, I think I´ve finally gotten all the dirt out of my hair. I´ve cleaned out my nicks, cuts, and sores as best I could. One had such a big chunk of dirt, that I thought I had a splinter. I´m glad I dealt with that one right away, for although I know I will at some point during my time here have to go the clinic, if not the hospital, I´m not quite ready for that experience yet.

Finally, the last complaint I will share with you - before explaining why all this pain and discomfort is so worth it- is the soreness that is beginning to finally die down. Muscles that I didn´t even think I used the past week have been screaming at me that indeed they do exist and complaining that I haven´t been using them more for the last twenty-four years of my life. Enough of all of this. It´s not really as bad as I´m making it sound to be. I just want you to understand that building houses in Batán, Limón during a tropical storm was not all fun and games, though most of it was. :)

Getting in the Right Mind Set

When facing a potentially catastrophic and horrendous ordeal, it is important to decide from the beginning that you´re not going to let anything get you down. That was the decisions I had to make when I woke up on the concrete floor of a school in Batán to the sound of rain that had been pounding all night. The rest of the Gringos and I had been under the impression that the province of Limón would be hot and full of bugs based on the fact that we were told to bring sunscreen and bug spray, so I stupidly didn´t even think about bringing a rain jacket. There was nothing I could do about it at that point. We couldn´t leave the school grounds for safety´s sake, so I was SOL. I felt slightly embarrassed at my predicament -only two other Gringos in our classroom had forgotten theirs as well- until we met up with the rest of the group and I saw that many of the Ticos hadn´t brought rain gear either. Apparently no one had expected such extreme weather. This made me feel a lot better and more a part of the group to know that we would all be suffering in the rain together.

As we first stepped out into the rain with the tools and pilotes that we would used to make the foundation of the house, I put on a huge smile. I had been told that during the rainy season would we see rain like never before. This is why I´m here, I thought. To exchange dry Texas droughts for crazy aguaceros such as the one I was in. I thought about the talk we had gotten at the US embassy a few days earlier, where we were told that we were the real ambassadors of our country, and thought to myself that this was the perfect time and place to earn the respect of the Ticos and to show myself that I could spend the next year of my life out of my element, in the rain, and speaking Spanish.

I count myself lucky that the rest of the people in my group, cuadrilla cuatro, also put on a good additude inspite of the weather. I spent the first part of the fifteen minute walk talking to Sofi, a Swiss girl, who I learned is a cheese maker by trade. Yes, I met an actual Swiss cheese maker from Switzerland. She was new to the Spanish language, so we had a fun time practicing our Spanish together, supplementing it with English whenever absolutely necessary. Her first language was French, and whenever we came at a stand still because she couldn´t think of the word in English, Manrique, one of our Tico group leaders, spoke to her in French. He did the same for me with English. Gracios a Dios, I thought. If I couldn´t understand what was going on, there was someone who could fill me. Of course, this was before I knew that almost all of the Ticos and Nicos - the kids from Nicuragua - spoke English fluently.

Without Judgment

We had been told in our introduction that these people no son pobres; están pobres. To me, that sent up a red flag that indeed I was about to be exposed to poverty like I had never seen before. Not that that means a whole lot. I´ve lived a pretty priviledged life, so the closest I´ve come to knowing about such things comes from those Christian´s Children Fund commericals, which I turn off as soon as I can so I don´t have to feel depressed. Now I was about to meet the people in those commericals. This time feeling sad was not an option, not because I don´t like the feeling, but because part of Techo´s mission is to meet and get to know the people in the community for who they are rather than who we would make them out to be. Instead of assuming that these people were pathetic and in need of my pity, I needed to open myself up to learning who they were and how they felt.

When we finally reached the house where the family lived, no one was home. I took this opportunity to examine my surroundings, trying not attach any of my own judgments to what I saw. Metal roof. Dirt floor. Garbage bags for walls and covering the porch where we stood waiting. A small fire pit. A pan. A toy out in the mud. A lighter. Some matches.

"Jenn. Jenn!"

I looked over to see Juan Pablo, another group member, opening his mouth beneath some sort of tropical tree.

"Jenn, ¿quiere tratar pipa?" Manrique repeated, pointing to the fruit above Juan Pablo´s head.

The rain was still pouring down hard, and I had heard never to drink the water in Limón. Whatever, I´m bound to get sick one way or the other, might as well figure out what this pipa thing is.

It was refreshing, sweet, the best coconut juice I had ever had. To tell the truth, I didn´t really like coconut anything until that moment, but as I quinched my thirst with the freshest juice anyone could ever have, everything felt beautiful. The pipa. The rain. The seven other volunteers, waiting to make the world a better place, one family at a time.

Mud, Mud Everywhere

"¡Hola!" Carlos, our group líder called out to a woman running through the cow pasture, running without shoes, her feet sinking in the mud without hesitation, her toes splayed wide as they balanced each step.

Spoken in Spanish, translated for your reading pleasure. "Hello! My name´s Carlos, and yours?"

"Welcome," spoke the woman.

"And your name?"

"Welcome."

"Yes, thank you very much, but your name mam?"

"Welcome. That´s my name. Welcome."

A bit of a chuckle went through the group as Carlos apologized with a smile. I didn´t understand the rest of the conversation quite as well, but as we picked up all of our equipment and began to head back the way we came, I assumed that we had gone to the wrong lot. We trudged through the mud following Doña Bienvenida as she gracefully followed the path of least resistance. The mud didn´t seem to bother her, and I think we all felt a bit silly that we had been trying to avoid the puddles as long as we had.

Soon we were tramping down the street, allowing our shoes to get completely covered in mud and freely filled with water. I stopped chiding myself for not coming prepared with rainboots and began to thank the Universe for my shoes. Today, tomorrow, the whole week, they might get filty beyond belief, but what did that matter. Later, when I got back to the school, my feet were still clean, probably the only clean part of my body, and I had my wonderful Keen hiking boots to thank for it.

*BTW, if the Keen company would like to use this bit of the story in an advertisement or such, I would be happy to trade for a fresh pair of size nine hiking boots. ;)

To Be Continued . . .

Agh! I had written another good chunk, but the internet ate it. I´ve been working on this post for three days, so I thought I´d post what I have now and share more later. More to come soon!