I have just landed back in the UK after living in Guatemala for a month. I volunteered on a local project for three weeks and left some time at the end to explore the country. Despite my best efforts on a popular language learning app and four group lessons before departure, my Spanish was not up to scratch and so I also doubled up my time by having Spanish lessons after I finished volunteering each day. Working on site in another country is challenging, the safety standards are often not as stringent as that in the UK, processes and procedures are different, and the availability of machinery and tools can be scarcer, however this experience was made especially difficult by my inability to speak Spanish. In England, when I have spent time on site I am often looking out for hazards, but on site in Guatemala I was on high alert every second! There was no PPE and the site was in the middle of the other houses of the family, so we would frequently be visited by the children, pet chick, dog and two pet kittens, although we would try our best to get them to leave us alone. On the first day I was taken around Antigua, the town I was staying in, and shown all the important locations, the bus stop, banks, supermarket and the most beautiful Mac Donald’s I have ever witnessed! My guide then took me on a bus to the town I would be volunteering in, called Cuidad Vieja. The buses are nothing like England, they are the shape of the classic yellow American school bus but painted in neon colours with bright lights and loud reggaetón music blasting out or other Latin American genres. There is normally a driver and a runner who waits by the open door and shouts the destination location, he runs along side the bus sometimes to gather people and help elderly locals with their bags and other adhoc items. The busses (referred to as chicken busses) will also stop almost anywhere for you along the route and I once witnessed the bus stopping on the main road with the runner leaping out to stop traffic and help a man put his 4m long metal pole along the floor of the bus. In the towns I lived and worked in there were no traffic lights so it was very chaotic and the driver had to constantly be aware of every direction – it felt comparable to my time on site, constantly looking out for dangers! The charity I volunteered with is called Habitat for Humanity and they have a large presence in Guatemala, working to close the gap on the 1.96+ million homes housing deficit*. Habitat for Humanity helps to improve homes to liveable standards, in addition to a programme of new-build housing construction. For low income families there is a scheme to borrow the money for the house and pay it off gradually over many years, with the labour coming from family members to further cut the costs. For families who cannot afford this scheme, where communities live in very poor conditions and have very little access to money, volunteers can help with the labour and the charity provides the funding from donations, however these homes are very humble. I had a day off volunteering because of a national holiday and I asked one of the charity workers if I could see some of the other projects (the house I was assigned to was on the loan-payback scheme). I got the bus to Chimaltenango and was met by the Habitat for Humanity representative. He took me to one of the settlements out in the country. It was pouring with torrential rain and we were completely drenched (considering it was the last month of the monsoon season I was mostly very lucky with the weather – apart from this day). We got to the group of homes and we were greeted by a family, the charity worker then ran through some paperwork with them. This was how the families applied for the work that they needed doing in the houses, the family we were with was the most engaged with the charity and helped all the other people in their community complete the paperwork. The house was built from concrete blocks with external rooms made of corrugated metal and wood. The rain was really making an impact and some of the children were scooping the rain out of puddles nearing the house. I was shown the stoves that the charity had built for these people and I could tell it meant a lot to have them. There was electricity for lights but the stove was the only heating source. We visited a few more homes and looked at the stoves and noted any other leaks or urgent issues they needed support with. I left feeling grateful that the charity exists and humbled about my own worries and the luxuries that I have. Every morning I woke up and had my breakfast with my host mother and the other volunteer that was also staying with my host family, but not on my project. My commute to work consisted of walking to the bus, a short but chaotic bus ride and a big hill from the bus stop to the construction site, which was made especially difficult in the heat of a beating sun! There were always lots of people around and we would often exchange hello’s – “hola, buenos días”! Some of the children would hold their stares a little too long or do double takes but I would always smile back. I know they were just curious as they were not exposed to many Europeans in the flesh, so I didn’t mind. We worked from 8am-10am then had a break everyday, there was always Pepsi and crisps, and the others had sandwiches too. The first week we didn’t talk much in the breaks due to the language barrier and getting used to each others presence, but that changed over the weeks I was there. By the end I could communicate with the other three men in my broken Spanish and the help of translation apps. We mostly spoke about traditions in England and Guatemala, the history of Central America, and differences between our countries. After morning break we worked until lunch, which was 1pm-2pm every day. The others lived near and so they went home and I would eat the packed lunch from my host mum with the rest of the family or sometimes alone. However when I finished my food there was always some children or animals around to speak to and play with. After lunch I only worked for one more hour then went back to Antigua to have my two-hour Spanish lesson with a local teacher. The men I worked with spoke next to no English but they were always kind to me and seemed to appreciate the extra hands I provided. The head of the project was an uncle to Nancy (who’s home we were building). They told me he was in his late 60s and he moved slowly but he could still carry two blocks at a time and was constantly measuring the different levels and making sure everything was on track. One of Nancys cousins was also working on site and although he was just 26 years old he was very, very strong. The third man wasn’t a family member but lived just next door to the site and you could tell he was very close to the family. He was around 40/50 years old, but despite his age and being a grandfather, he had a childish sense of humour and we would often burst out laughing when someone stumbled or did something silly. I truly felt like a part of the family too while I was there. The work was extremely tough, on the first few days we had about 1500 concrete blocks arrive and 3 tonnes of aggregate, which we had to move off the trucks and into sensible locations, tucked away as much as possible. There was no cement mixer so other jobs included hand mixing together the ingredients to make the concrete and mortar with spades, digging up the site, bending the rebar to make stirrups for the RC beams/columns and tying the rebar together with the correct spacing as per the plans. The house was only one floor but had capacity to increase to another level in the future. The design was all RC beams and columns and concrete blocks. We spent a lot of time setting out the site with measuring tapes, string, plumbs, and looking at the engineering drawings. The site had an extra section of wall and columns in one of the corners compared with what was shown on the plans due to a last minute change to maximise the space. The updated drawings were not finished so the extra structural elements were just drawn on until the final version was ready but every few days we would have a visit from the engineers to check on the project. Everyone was very invested in getting it right and working together, and when a task was getting carried out everyone was on standby to help, for example moving the column rebar into position. One person would be standing in the foundation trench and the others would be getting the column and lifting it into place. The work was very physically demanding, especially when it was a hot day as there was not a lot of shade. Trying to understand the Spanish and being always alert on site made it mentally demanding too! – but having the chance to volunteer on a construction project and experience how Guatemalans live and work was life changing and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the support from my employer who enabled me to have this time out of work, and for the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) who financially sponsored this work-away project. * https://www.habitat.org/where-we-build/guatemala |
