In Santa Maria de Jesus

After sleeping better than the night before, I awoke around 3 am. Moving to the other room was a good idea since I didn’t have nearly as much noise and being in a bottom bunk let me read in bed and stow my things under the bed.

I came out of the room at 4 am and finished Lost Birds while on the sofa in the living room area of our suite. Mary came out before 5 am and chatted until 6 am when we walked down to the kitchen area where we had hot tea while we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and packed 20 lunches including a banana, cookies and corn chips for us while we worked on the house.

Breakfast at 7 am included a very good breakfast burrito with eggs, cheese and sausage. There was also fresh fruit, cold cereal and toast. Everyone commented that the meals have been very good.

The bus left for the build site a little after 8 am and struggled through traffic taking over two hours to travel the 23 miles from CRI in Guatemala City to Pueblo Santa Maria de Jesus. As we walked up the hill from the church toward the house we were struck by the number of dogs wandering the streets.  Most of them were skinny mixed breed dogs that may or may not have a regular owner.  We took turns carrying a water cooler and a five gallon carboy of filtered water to the site.  

Our team continued putting the batten board type siding on the house. Most of us changed jobs to allow people who hadn’t been involved in building to learn a different aspect of carpentry. Mary continued carrying boards to be sawn, but I moved from the saw to nailing siding on the exterior with Kent and Becky. Our local building supervisors were Romero and Carlos with Edgar joining us before lunch. There were a couple of light rains that didn’t cause much slowdown in the work. We took a brief lunch break and had enough lunches packed for our team, the local building supervisors and the family. We chuckled at the music being played by one of the neighbors which was “Bad Boys” playing over and over. By 3 pm we had all of the siding on purlins (rafters) for the roof and everything ready for installation of the doors, windows and corrugated steel for the roof.

Woman filling water jugs

Edgar took us down the hill from the church into the town of Santa Maria de Jesus. We walked through the town square and to the church across from the square. As we walked we went past a community well where women were filling plastic containers of with water.  There was also an area where women were washing clothes in basins with built-in washboards.  

Washing clothes in Santa Maria de Jesus

The town square was like a Latin American flea market with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. I met a group of missionaries from Mountain Mission while I was walking in Antigua.  The market was dirty and noisy with a lot of stray dogs walking around looking for a handout.  Most of our group took a tuk tuk up the hill for the town square to the church but Cait and I opted to walk up since the afternoon was so pleasant.

Mary & Pam in a Tuk Tuk

After boarding the bus, we had a quick stop at a nearby tienda where many in our group had ice cream or another snack. The drive back to CRI took over two hours putting us back for a 6 pm dinner of Pepian which is a national dish of Guatemala. This stew contains chicken, potatoes, squash and green beans. It was served with pico de gallo, homemade tortillas and white rice. We all enjoyed it very much as well as the warm banana bread.

After dinner I made a dash for the shower and felt much better with clean clothes. I worked on the journal during the evening meeting. We will be packaging rice tomorrow morning for local distribution. we will return to the house build in the afternoon to complete the build. Everyone seems to have had a good day but is tired and will probably sleep well. The rain that started after 8 pm should help us to sleep.