Juarez Hammer Time! -- Day 5
rob...@robertgidley.com
A few finishing touches and--voila! A half-finished Children's center!
(I wish I could say that I came up with the title for today, but I didn't. It's from Fr. Dan who wished he could print it on T-shirts for us to take home.)
Thu, Feb 18, 2010
5:45 am
It's entirely possible that my alarm might have woken me up this morning. But I've been coughing all night and finally gave up on sleeping and I'm up about fifteen minutes before my alarm would have gone off.
Every night, Fr. Jim sets up three coffee pots with water and coffee beans in them. Whoever gets up first starts one of them up (you can only run one at a time, because otherwise you blow out the circuit breaker). This is the first time I'm up early enough to get a cup.
Woo boy, howdy! This stuff is STRONG. My spoon stood straight up when I put it in and part of it dissolved as I pulled it out.
So, just about right for waking up with in the morning.
6:25 am
Fr. Dan Klooster is up and chatty (as usual). He says that the ironic thing about this part of Juarez is that before the current unpleasantness, you heard a more gunfire than now. Back then, people would celebrate by occasionally shooting off a gun.
Now, you hear no gunfire at all. None. Nada. Zip. I'm sure any gunfire would draw down police like flies to poo.
7:45 am
I think I'm catching a cold, but Fred has tackled it and it's thrown him to the mat. He'll be staying here at the compound today and resting up. Fortunately, we have a large crew and not much left to do.
And this morning, I tried to get Fr. Jim to sing the worship song to the tune from "Gilligan's Island" (I even sang a verse so he could hear it). But he wouldn't go for it. Traditionalist.
8:30 am
We're at the building site and Fr. Dan is outlining our goals for the day. We have to get the roof done, so that we have a weather-tight building, get the door installed and get the trim up (all Gateway buildings have purple boards around the doors and windows so you know they're Gateway buildings).
Fr. Dan emphasizes that we need to be extra careful today because we've been working hard for three days in the desert. This is when we're most at hazard for exhaustion and dehydration.
9:20 am
We're having a cookout tonight and Fr. Dan needs help shopping, so I volunteer. Heck, I can shop WAY better than I can drive a nail.
The grocery store we go to is the same one we've stopped at a couple of times after work, but this is the first time I've really had a chance to look around. This place is nice. There's a big produce section with a wide variety of normal and Mexican fruit. Everything seems fresh and in good condition.
There's some peculiar Mexican touches, like the cactus bar (instead of an olive bar) where you can get freshly de-prickled prickly pear cactus slabs.
Other than that, we could be in any upscale US grocery store. Actually, this one is nicer than the ones I usually shop at.
Fr. Dan orders up 40 steaks from the butcher and we head off to hunt down some potato chips, onions, sodas, and beers to flesh out the feast. When (after about 10 minutes) the butcher brings them out, I immediately spot that something is wrong.
One steak is 20 pesos (about $1.60). Forty steaks should, therefore, be about 800 pesos. But the two packages of steaks this guy brought only add up to 500 pesos. We're short 300 pesos worth of steaks (yeah, it's weird to measure steaks in money, but it works!).
Sure enough, the guy discovers that we only have 26 steaks instead of 40. Oopsie! Who said math wasn't useful in everyday life? Not me!
10:00 am
We're standing in the checkout line with our three carts worth of stuff and some of the local Army patrol guys pass us. They head for the shampoo aisle and spend about five minutes debating products. I guess that standing at a checkpoint in the sun all day would be hard on your hair.
Fr. Dan explains about the guys in the parking lot helping people back out of their spaces. Not only do they prevent a lot of fender benders and traffic jams, but they also keep away beggers, car thieves, stick-up artists AND they collect carts and bring them back to the store.
It's also polite to tip them a peso or two (about 10 cents) when you leave.
10:30 am
We stop by the church compound (St. Mattias) to put the steaks in the frig, the beers on ice, and the chips on the table.
Deacon Paul checks in on Fred who was sleeping, but woke up when Paul poked his head in. Fred says he's feeling pretty good. He's feel so good, in fact, that he's going to take another nap.
I got some Mexican cough syrup at the grocery store. The kind of cough syrup that you can't buy in the US any more because it's full of ingredients that work. It's also full of ingredients that let me talk to the giant fuzzy bunny that's following me around. Hi, Mr. Bunny!
11:00 am
We're back at the site where everybody is up on the roof nailing away at the tar paper compositey stuff that covers the roof and makes it waterproof.
One thing that I haven't mentioned yet in the blog is the Young People that are on the trip. We've got about four young teenagers (12 and up) and they've actually worked diligently. Even when they goof off, they go off by themselves and don't distract the other workers, but for the most part, they've been great about doing their share (and more).
They come in especially handy with roof work, because gravity doesn't work as well on young, light people as it does on us older, denser folk.
12:10 pm
The big front entrance door, a metal-double door, is installed in its hole (which two days ago was a subject of much debate and nail pulling about how big it was and how, exactly, did we know it was going to fit if we didn't have the door to try it with).
The door fits the hole fine, but the doors aren't closing correctly. So, Fr. Dan starts whapping on the doors with a hammer and adds some strategic nails.
The final part of the roof is being nailed down. This is the part at the pointy tip of the building called the "Gable."
12:20 pm
Lunch is a teensy bit late, because Fr. Dan wanted to wait until the roof was completed. Now it is (yay!) and lunch is ready and it's burritos (yay! yay!).
12:40 pm
Once again, the lack of dessert has forced (forced!) us to pile into one of the vans and head for the local version of a 7/11 to do some foraging.
Fr. Dan specifically recommended today's Strange Food: BuBu Lubu (pronounced "boo boo loo boo"). It's found in the candy section, and features a white marshmallow-looking mascot wearing a red shirt. His legs make him look like a ghost (he doesn't have any).
The Bubu Lubu itself isn't TOO strange. It's chocolate-covered marshmallow, but on top of the marshmallow and below the chocolate is a layer of strawberry jelly, which isn't very sweet and has some strange flavors running around in it. I have to admit, it's not like anything you can buy in the US.
(Also, I'm sad that this is the last day for Strange Mexican Snacks. I hadn't even gotten started on the flaming hot Cheetos...)
1:20 pm
There are clouds in the sky! A few white, puffy clouds, but it's still the first clouds I've seen since we got to Juarez.
Fr. Jim points out that other churches in the area have feeding programs for the poor kids, but Fr. Zuniga has the only church that offers Music and Art programs. It's good to feed kids, but you have to feed their souls, too. There's talented kids out here in the Colonias and who knows what kind of magic will come from teaching them about art and music.
2:00 pm
Chris does the last bit of work on the house as he planes down the sill for the front door so that it closes smoothly and all the way.
We have a secure, weather-proof building that can be used for Sunday School and Children's programs and to store stuff for the church (and churches ALWAYS need more storage!). Later groups will come along and add electrical and plumbing and finish the interior, but the church can start using it now.
Fr. Dan also says that the building design lets a second floor be added to the building at a later time by removing the roof, adding a strategic pillar or two and slapping on a second story (although it's probably a teensy bit more complicated than that).
2:40 pm
Fr. Zuniga arrives for the dedication ceremony. He says that this is the third Arts and Entertainment Center for the program that he runs. They have classes on Music, Art, Culture, English, and Computers.
He brings with him a pack of about eight kids who have made a sign that says "Muchas Gracias por su Apoyo" and has hearts and flowers on it. "Apoyo" means work, so the sign translates as "Much Thanks for your work."
As part of the dedication, we talk about how we feel about building something the size of the Houston Astrodome and then giving it away. Then we have free-for-all prayer and Fr. Jim gives a mini-sermon. Jose Limas (the head Mexican worker who also makes the windows and happens to be a preacher) also gives a mini-sermon in Spanish.
The Fr. Zuniga does the asperges using his aspergillum and douses each of us with holy water. (The aspergillum is a little gadget that holds about a quart of water that gets sprayed on the person in front of it. It's old-fashioned, hardly ever done in the US, and pretty cool.)
Usually dedications are pretty emotional times. Most of the time, when we build a house for a particular family they've been around all week (sometimes helping out) and we've gotten to see them and their kids. We know who's going to be living in the house that we build.
This time, we don't really know the kids who will be using the building. This is the first time we've seen any of these kids and presumably there will be a bunch more kids who benefit from the building. There's not an emotional connection.
But this one building will have more impact on the community than if we built 20 houses. Kids will come here and learn about music. They'll paint and draw and maybe even do some sculpture. They'll use computers and learn English and discover their own culture. Thousands of small souls will be nourished by what we started today.
We might not have saved the world today, but we sure helped push it in the right direction.
Oh, almost forgot. Fr. Zuniga says that if anybody has any old computers or musical instruments (working ones only, please), they should send them along to Fr. Dan who will smuggle them across the border. (Haha! Only kidding, Mr. Customs Agent reading this blog! Fr. Dan will import them in a very legal way!)
Send them to:
Fr. Dan Klooster
Gateway Mission Training Center
4131 Trowbridge Drive
El Paso, TX 79903
6:15 pm
Fr. Dan is outside cooking up that batch of steaks we bought earlier today, along with grilling some onions and sausages and that's where I'm headed! Tomorrow's a travel day, so it should be a short entry.
West Texas School girls
Okay, we've found the video, and I watched it on Kevin's phone here. Maybe it's just me (or the teeny screen I watched it on), but some of those "Middle School girls" need a shave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyvCmpjKFVA
Thanks go out today to Young People Kristin and Craig for help editing today's entry. They helped clean up a number of style issues.
Robert
Juarez Hammer Time!