Day 4: Habitat for Humanity and the Fine Art of Brick Making

Have you ever imagined how your life would change if your floor were simply dirt? When it rains hard the ground in your kitchen develops little streams that run through your home. Everything you put down gets dirty...including your baby. Everything you spill is absorbed into the ground and the smell just stays there. Forty-seven percent of all homes in Nicaragua...have dirt floors. Mothers carry their children much longer during infancy because they are afraid to put them down to crawl on a dirt floor where they would be exposed to parasites. Since children aren't able to crawl they often have developmental issues with large motor skills, depth perception and even reading because they are not familiar with viewing things up-close. The homes don't have material floors because many of them were simply constructed from scrap material. Having a home with solid walls and a floor is a basic need. Our Wednesday was spent working with Habitat For Humanity International. 

Our Habitat representative Vittoria met us at our hotel and on the way to our first site...she talked to us about Habitat’s work. Adequate housing is a severe problem in Nicaragua, and Habitat is working to address the issue one house at a time. For about sixty-five hundred dollars, a block home can be constructed. The average home size is 375 square feet...much less than most American garages.

Our first project was at an open-air shelter where a primitive "Brick Factory" had been set-up. We grabbed shovels and wheel barrels and proceeded to mix large piles of dirt with dry concrete mix and limestone. The work was very physically demanding. The dirt piles were very large and we had to move them from one place to the next to complete the mixing procedure.

When that was done we shoveled the mixture into buckets and then passed them up into a rudimentary brick pressing machine that made very large and simple clay bricks. You would have been very proud to see your Nicaragua Travel Team work. Our associates from all different functions and business units...drenched in sweat and dirt...set a goal to make one-hundred and fifty bricks before lunchtime. The bricks are large (about 5 inches thick and 16 inches long) and require about two five-gallon buckets of dirt to make one brick. Your team pushed hard and made one-hundred and ninety-two bricks before lunch!

Rain clouds form quickly here, and the rain comes down hard. A nice cooling rain drenched us as we got into the van to head to our next project. What we saw over the next few minutes will probably change the way we think about our lives. Those Homeowners Association meetings where we debate the smallest details of our manicured cul-de-sac neighborhoods will become somewhat ridiculous when we recall the places that we have seen in the La Gallina (Chickens) neighborhood. To get there we traveled down a long straight road made of individual paving stones. It was the nicest road we had seen in Nicaragua and Vittoria told us that a former dictator had it built by hand so that he could access his vacation home on the coast. We parked beside that road and walked down a ruddy dirt road to the village. Vittoria was explaining that this village was a Habitat Project that intended to slowly replace the tiny pieced-together shacks that looked as if you could push them over with your hands. An eight year old kid pushing a cart (headed to the community well) passed us, and Vittoria engaged him. Vittoria knows everyone by name in this village. Her passion for the people and her unwavering desire to help them achieve better living conditions was very motivating. As we walked through the village, several kids came out to say hi. All of them barefoot, dirty and wearing thin clothes that had likely been passed down for years. But all of them were happy and playful. Dogs strolled everywhere...gaunt and looking as if they were in constant pain. Chickens darted across the walking path as we visited home after home. The people were so kind and welcoming to let this large group of strangers into their tiny homes to see their accommodations. Most of the Habitat Homes are built in front of ...or beside their existing "shack" home so that they can transition into it as the construction finishes. Once they move into their Habitat home they typically leave the shack standing and use it for a kitchen or to house animals. The shacks are extremely unsafe for many reasons. Most of the cooking is done on a stove made of rocks with a little fire in the middle. The smoke from a stove constructed this way fills the little shack constantly and the families develop breathing problems and sometimes lung cancer. There simply isn't proper ventilation.

At this point it would be easy to jump to judgment about the people who live in these conditions. Why don't they find better paying jobs and make a better life for themselves? Why don't they get better materials and construct better homes? Why do they continue to bring kids into this life? The issues in impoverished environments are perpetual because of the lack of education and gainful employment. When a child is born to a sixteen year old mother, in a village in a country that has been controlled by greedy dictators for hundreds of years...they simply have no exposure to a different way of life. They suffer, but do not know of another lifestyle or how to achieve it. Any improvement is a step to change that paradigm and over the course of several years the benefits of a real home with a safe kitchen and material floor will encourage and educate younger people to seek out a more sustainable living environment. As we drove in we passed several sugar cane fields where most of the villagers work...for less than two-hundred dollars a month. That sugar is used to feed the world, yet these people are not collecting the benefits of their natural resources.

After our shocking tour of the village we made our way to the build site. Three small block homes, about four feet apart from each other, stood in various stages of construction. We were introduced to the beautiful twenty year old owner of the home we would work on for the evening. Maria is currently twenty years old but became pregnant at fifteen. She now has two kids and is one of the fortunate girls because the birth father is still with her. The four of them currently live in ten-by-ten shack...with one bed. Maria proudly showed us the shell of her new home, then took us in to see the interior of her current shack. It is so hard visiting the insides of these homes. A beautiful young girl showing you where she sleeps. To her it isn't bad. It is home. It is hard not to wince thinking about the dark and pungent nights spent in such an environment. Only twenty-four percent of Nicaraguan homes have a toilet inside the home. Most toilets are pits or what we called "outhouses" in the US. Vittoria showed us the new toilet that would accompany Maria's house. Habitat has been experimenting with a new design that filters and processes the waste, making a much more sanitary "outhouse" with a metal stall and real commode. It is still outside the home, but a much more pleasant and dignified environment.

Our Habitat Project for the rest of the day involved hauling rock inside the partially constructed block walls of Maria's home to create a base for her concrete floor. Your Travel Team once again would have made you proud with the effort they put into Maria's home. Lisa Lunsford with her incredibly beautiful long fingernails was trowing cement into cracks in the walls. Helen Brewer, Shelly Flanagan and Kelly Overton were tamping down the rock with long sticks weighted on the end by a large block of concrete.

Jennifer Collison, Richard James, and Alex Rodriguez were joined by Jason Barr and our World Vision host Jim Fischer as they shoveled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of rock and slate into the house. The unflappable Glenn Nichols spread rock with a shovel. Tiny Maria worked side-by-side with us to build her home. By this time we were getting really tired but her energy and radiant smile kept us moving. We all kept imagining the day when she could move in and get her children off of the dirt.

To end this remarkable day, Vittoria took us to the Pacific Ocean where we walked down the beach. It was a perfect ending to all that we had seen and done. The fishermen had just come in and we got to see the days catch of mahi-mahi, red snapper...and a rather disgusting cart full of gutted sharks. But the ocean breeze was cooling and we felt refreshed. We returned to Managua very tired but with a new appreciation for the people of Nicaragua, the blessings of our own lives and respect for the amazing contributions of our International Partners.