Building houses

Volunteering has always been an important part of my life.  I've met so many wonderful people, and had so many wonderful experiences, and learned so many wonderful things.  I think it's one of the best things you can do.

So - when our section at work decided to spend a day in December helping to build houses with Habitat for Humanity, I was very excited.

We gathered early in the morning and caravanned out to a small town about 1.5 hours west of Recife - in the interior of Pernambuco.  The women we were helping to build houses for worked processing manioc flour.  The development where there houses were being built was in various stages of completion.  Some places were all ready inhabited.  Others were waiting for people to move in.

Although it looks like this goat had already moved in!

Here you can see the walls up, but the plaster has yet to be put on this last house.

The put us to work building the interior walls of the houses.  The "bricks" are called tijolos.
















The guys that trained us made it look so easy - but it's definitely not.  This is an example of my crookedly constructed wall.

But - at the end of the day, we'd accomplished quite a bit - and made some new friends, learned new skills, and had a great time.