 |
| The current house for 3 people that we are rebuilding |
Today was a very long and strenuous day. A big reason for this was because of last night. As usual, Eric and I stayed in town pretty late and were goingto catch a moto taxi with our guys (Fernando and Carlos). We called them early in the day and set it up and there were no problems.
After we finished doing everything that we needed, Eric and I went to the meeting spot for the moto taxi. We sat there and waited. Nothing. This was the first time that they were late. As time went on, they still didn't show up. By now it was getting pretty late so we decided to call them. Apparently Fernando had forgotten about us. So as soon as we called, he said that he would meet us in a minute.
Once he got to Eric and I, it was just him. He didn't bring Carlos or anyone else which was silly because we can't put both Eric and I on the moto with him. But when he pulled up, I immediately smelled alcohol on him. Then he proceeded to tell us that it was his birthday and that he has been out drinking for awhile.
As soon as he left, Eric and I looked at each other and immediately decided that neither one of us will be driving back with him. Riding on a motorcycle late at night in Bolivia is dangerous enough. Driving back with a drunk Bolivian is just dumb. So while he was gone, Eric and I just left and went to look for other moto taxi's. But we couldn't find any.
 |
| The little guy we are building a house for |
Luckily the next morning we were able to get a taxi back no problem. The biggest inconvience of all this was the fact that the hotel was not in Eric and I's budget. So next week, we willhave to just spend a lot less than normal.
After eating breakfast, I started my morning work. I spent the whole morning working on Warren's fence. I tore down a chunk of his old fencing and put up new fencing for the garden that he wants. This was a slow process because I was working alone, but I enjoyed it.
 |
| The dream team + Eric |
After work program, Jerry and I went down the road to this family's "house". They are a middle aged couple with a very retarded son. They have always been poor and didn't have much. But a little while ago, their shelter/house that they had burned down. The little that they had was lost in the fire and now their shelter is very......rustic. It is nothing more that some boards and leaves thrown together.
Because building the house for the other lady is not going to work out, we will be building a house for these folk. Our plan is to start construction tomorrow or the next day. I am very excited to finally start a building project! I will keep you posted as best as I can!
Tuesday April 30, 2013
The title of today's blog should be called "rice" as that is what I did all day long. I am getting tired of all this rice business. But fortunately, I think today will be the last day for cleaning and drying it.
 |
| Trouble witten all over this picture |
As soon as they took off this morning, I grabbed a couple of my hats and some clothes that have been sitting in my suitcase for awhile and went to do a load of laundry. I want to make sure any clothes that I am leaving behind are clean. I have to say, those clothes get pretty gross fast. They get covered with cockroach poop and other stains from who knows where.
After doing some serious scrubbing and hanging up my clothes to dry, I met up with Sam to lay out the tarps and spread out the rice to dry. As I said, we are now down to our last few bags so hopefully this is the last time we will have to deal with the rice. After we spread the rice out in the sun, we had to flip all of the rice every 20-30 minutes.
After a few hours, it was time to clean the rice. So while all the kids went out to the banana farm to machete again, Sam and I brought out our fan and set it up. The clean the rice, we have a massive pile of dried rice, then we take bucket full after bucket full and slowly pour it in front of the fan so all the debris is blown away. This took a very long time, especially in the steaming hot sun. In the past 2 days, I have sweated an exorbant amount. It seems that as soon as I put a new shirt on it gets soaked and starts sticking to me. It's a good thing I can take as many showers as I want because somedays I need 2 or 3!
For dinner Eric and I decided that pretty much all we could make was lentils and rice. But thats completely fine with the boys because they love that meal. Also, Emmy does usually cook anything harty or too good for dinners as she does for lunch. Whenever it's Juan and Emmy's day off, the boys know that they will be full after dinner.
Juan and Emmy got back on the truck shortly after we finished dinner. Thats when I decided to head over to the big house for my cold shower but also to help unload the truck. While Juan and I were carrying in bags of rice that we had got processed today, we saw a huge rat scurry over Juan's foot. It was funny because the girls screamed loudly and scurried out. Juan and I pounced into attack mode. He grabbed and broom and I grabbed a really big bread pan. After a little prying, we flushed him out into the open where I smashed him good with the bread pan two times.
Even though I popped him pretty good, he was a tough little booger and was only dazed. Thats when David stepped up to the plate and stomped his foot on the Rat's upper body pinning him down. But Petie the rat was still wagging his tail back in forth. But don't worry, we made sure to end him before we disposed of the body.
Wednesday May 1, 2013
 |
| The snake that bit me! |
We are now on the homestretch. When I look at my calendar, there are only 14 days left until our departure out of Rurre. Time is creeping away from us. What better way to celebrate this than to finally start construction on the long anticipated house!
This morning, Jerry, Sam, a few of the troublemakers,and I loaded up several tools and headed off to the worksite, which fortunately is only about a 5-7 minute drive up the road. Our goal for the morning was to mark out where we are going to build the house, and clean up the area a bit. We also went ahead and dug all of the holes for the posts.
The poverty of these people is unbelievable. The have absolutely no money and no way to get it. They are forced to live off of the land and eat whatevers fruits they can find around their house. They have 1 bed for the 3 of them, a shelter with 2 "walls", no tools, and barely any clothes. I found out today that the boy is not their actual son. They knew the boys parents. When he was born and the parents realized that he was retarded, they were about to take him to the river and drown him but these people said that they would take him and find a way to raise him. They may not have much, but they apparently have some big hearts.
After preping everything for construction, and eating lunch, it was time. We loaded up a lot of the wood from Familia Feliz and drive it out there. Unfortunately, we had to order new posts and they were not ready. So all we could do today was build the roof frames. But that in itself is a pretty big step.
Eric and I didn't do too well with our hammering skills today though. We both struggled a bit to make the Bolivian made, 5" nails to work in this really hard wood. Between us, we bent probably about 25 nails. Jerry was a champ at pounding those things in though. But it made us feel a little better when he told us that even he thought the wood was really hard and even he bent a few nails as well.
Another fun thing to note about today is that I got my first snake bite! What better place to have your first snake bite than in the jungles of Bolivia right! But as you can see, it was just a little green guy and he is not poisonous, so you can relax padres.
After we finished building the trusses for the house, Sam, Eric, Jorge, and I went to pick up some oranges. We can get oranges from just about anywhere along the road, but recently we found this family that has some trees with amazingly sweet and juicy oranges. Their rate is 100 oranges for 20 B's (which is less than $0.03 per orange), so our plan was to go ahead and buy them out. Sam was able to climb like a monkey and pull/shake down 200 for us. But we were hoping to bring back around 500. So, we loaded up, and went to another house along the road that sold them. But those wern't ready yet. Coming back with 200 oranges wasn't too bad. We were able to get plenty to each house.
This evening for the Wednesday night worship, we all broke out into groups of 3 or four to pray. In my group I had Armando and David; both of whom have taken an attachment to me for awhile now. I prayed first and then they did. Both of their prayers were focused on Eric's and I departure. They both thanked God that we came here, that they got to meet us, and asked that God would keep us safe as we traveled back to the United States. After the prayer, while still on our knees, both of them immediately hugged me. They told me that they are really going to miss me. This could have easily been the highlight to my day.
 |
| This my friends is a papaya. |
Today we were not able to continue working on the house because we are waiting for the posts to be recut. They should be finished on Sunday or Monday so will we hit it hard next week.
At first I wasn't exactly sure what to do today. I usually have to pretty proactive in finding jobs to do. After a little thinking, I just decided to get the weed wacker and start slashing in the big ditch winding through campus. The only challenge was avoiding hitting pipes, rocks, bricks, logs and other random things hidden in the brush.
Once I was finished doing a good amount of cutting, I helped Emmy make bread. Her and Juan had mixed it this morning and I just rolled em' up and baked them. Normally Juan and Emmy's bread isn't very good at all. But since they wanted me to finish things up, I gave the bread a little more time and it turned out a little better I think.
After bread, it was soccer time! Time to rumble and kick the ball around with the kids. Unfortunately, Juan and Jerry were on the same team and that wasn't my team. Yeah, we lost. But it was still a lot of fun as usual.
The scariest thing today happened during the soccer game. While I was playing goalie, I looked to my left and saw David who had been climbing in the tree, fall straight to the ground! It was no little fall either. He fell a good 8 feet of so on his back.
As soon as I ran over there to see if he was ok, Moisesito (who was behind David in the tree) jumped down and told me that he didn't do anything and he didn't push David. But at that point I didn't care why it happened, I just wanted to make sure little David was ok. He got a few pretty big scraps and was really shaken up. He also said that his stomach was really hurting a lot on the inside.
 |
| Fried turtle anyone? |
I slowly walked with him over to the faucet to run cool water over his cuts to make them feel better. The whole way, Moisesito was being overly nice and kept saying that he didn't do anything. The thing is, no one had accused him of anything yet. And second of all, he is generally not a nice kid. He is always causing problems and fighting with the other kids. I don't think I have ever seen him doing anything nice just because he could. So his actions were throwing some pretty huge warnings to me.
Later on, when it was just David and me talking, I asked him if Moisesito pushed him and he said yes. Apparently, while David was trying to climb down, Moisesito kicked him and knocked him out of the tree. I made sure he was telling me the truth and then I talked to Warren about it. Warren loves dealing with all the difficult children and dishing out punishments to make examples out of them. Works for me.
Friday April 3, 2013
Once again, I wasn't exactly sure what today had in store for me. Not knowing what I'm going to do or what I have is a pretty cool feeling that I'm not used to in the States. Normally on Fridays I make bread for the outreach program. However, this week we are taking a break and not doing evangelism.
As it turns out, I still ended up making again today. When Emmy asked me if I was going to be making bread today for outreach, I told her no. Then she immediately said, "oh, well then can you make bread for our house? I want you to make it the same way that you have been because it is really really good." Beings how I didn't have any other plans, and she gave me such a nice compliment, I said yes.
While waiting for the bread to rise, I helped Sam with a couple things. The first thing we did was put up the final 2 electrical poles. The second thing I did was drive us out to a man who sells oranges and bought another 100 for Familia Feliz.
Right after lunch, Eric and I went to roll up the bread, make a fire, and bake em' up. Starting the fire these days is not as easy as when Steve was here baking bread everyday. Now, the oven doesn't get used nearly as much and there are not always coals that we can use to light the fire. We have also been having a lack of firewood problem. But we prevailed!
Saturday April 4, 2013
Slept in this morning. Awesome. Went to church, when I got there, they told me that I needed to do the welcome and have the opening prayer. Wouldn't be Sabbath without a few little surprises thrown in there right?
After church, Eric and I took a nice little nap and relaxed since there was no evangelism today. Later this evening, I went with most all of the volunteers into town to play some volleyball. This time Eric bit the bullet and stayed back with the kids.
Volleyball was actually a lot of fun this time. Several guys that live in Rurre showed up who actually knew how to play and that made it a lot more fun. Normally what we do doesn't even resemble volleyball. But this time, we played something very similar to it.
You stay Civilized......Planet Earth!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment