This week was the last in San Mateo. A project that has lasted 6 weeks, the goal of which was the completion of a wall on the third floor of Provecenh, an place for kids to receive tutoring after regular school hours and instruction in IT and agriculture as well as a hot meal, replacing tin covers for a permanent structure is now complete. I have not worked on any other project and being able to look back to where I started and where we finished is extraordinary.
This week again picked up from we left the previous week. More cement, sand, water was mixed together with the runny paste again being used to from a layer on the inside of the wall. There were certain sections trickier than usual, where the applied mix would slide down, torturously slowly, refusing to stick to the wall. In moments like these to speed matters up, Freddy will stroll over non-chalantly, take a spade, dip it into the mix, with a casual rotation, twist of the elbow and wrist, almost a shrug, he would spray the mix repeatedly over a wide area, covering the areas that we couldn't.Every day as well since we begun to construct the wall proper we would spend the last 30minutes cleaning furiously, the tools, the floor of dust, cement remnants, preparing our work space for the coming day.
Monday night I came home to Casa Shekina to a chilly dinner, no meat, only broccoli and soup of which I'm generally not a fan of. I had not eaten any meat the whole day as it hit me that it was going to stay that way, I felt a desolate and endless sadness deep inside me. The next morning I awoke with an intense desire to dash to the toilet. I had diarrhea, all of Wednesday, and was unable to go to my placement, mainly because there are no adequate facilities to use in an emergency such as this one. The toilet needs to be filled manually with water which if not done correctly may leave a unwelcome stench for the normal users. Not wanting to create any mess anywhere, I solely went to my Spanish lessons where toilets similar to ones to which I'm accustomed were available to me. I also made sure to go to Picadilly, a restaurant where I was able to have an 8 ounce steak and cure all cravings for meat. Having consumed pepto-bismol and other tablets recommended by a nurse as well, I was able to get over my illness in one day. It was not only me who had problems, and I was not the only who missed their placement that Wednesday, not even the only one who missed my placement in particular that day.
I came back on Wednesday to start the final part of theproject-painting. After cleaning diligently all the space adjacent to the wall to be painted, two big cans of paint were opened, blue and green. Me and Tom, a new volunteer who as it turns has volunteered abroad before, in Malawi of all places, took the blue paint, alternating wall sections with Alexis, a Montrealer of Argentinian decent, and Dustin, from Saskatchewan who took the green paint. I first worked with the paint roller, covering large areas with paint, twisting and turning the brush to avoid any of it spilling or dripping from the roller on the floor, while Tom covered all the smaller and harder to reach holes and spaces with the brush. As Freddy called for break time and everybody descended to 'sopa time', the name for our break time, where most people would snack on a noodle soup high on sodium, and I on chocolate coins, I swapped my roller for a brush. Generally I found painting to be relaxing activity and as others ate, I painted, covering all the small spaces and holes that were previously missed, trying to be perfect. I kept working in this manner the rest of the day, painting, relaxing, felling calm and tranquil. The only downide was the inevitable mess, despite my best efforts to prevent them and clean them. Green and blue splotches littered our workspace.
Thursday was the last painting day. For the sake of rotation, and having everyone try out and work in different areas, I was sent to paint the playground with Carl, an event organiser at the UN, while others finished painting on the third floor. It turned to be a more challenging task as not only was there a shortage of paint but we were also painting over porous wood. This needed to be painted over several times, each layer covering the previous. Certain sections were however impervious to any amount of paint - applying more paint simply would drive away the existing layers, uncovering a bare patch of wood. Eventually after much deliberation and advice I resolved to dabbing carefully all these sections as well as the corners. By the end of the day swings, see-saws, slides were all painted meticulously and it looked great from the distance, even our limit on paint made it difficult to make it look flawless from up close. Painting on the third floor was also complete, back and front and it looked awesome from below, green and blue streaming all over the top of the building, like icing on top of a cake.
Friday was clean up day. All the heavy lifting after 2 days of relaxation, painting away, was felt intimately by us, particularly since the number of volunteers had decreased dramatically to just 3 for that Friday. Huffing and puffing, dripping with sweat, we carried all the remaining leftover materials to their storage places in the garden, 3 flights of stairs away. Bags of sand, cement, cinder blocks were all moved. The floor was then rinsed extenisvely using all the water from the titanic blue bucket we had used alla long to clean our tools day after day. The bucket itself was relieved of all its cement residue, tools, general garbage, wiped and generally restored to its clean original state.
This all took 2 hours. We then descended to the first floor to enjoy a genuine, traditional Guatemalan BBQ, unlike the silly North American BBQs with pizzas and burgers. This was delicious meat, melting in your mouth, even though due to lack of utensils, it had to be eaten in a slightly unseemly way. To keep with the tradition I even had some soup, dry soup. The crunchy noodles were not half-bad!
Everybody went back, took pictures and reminisced. Juan Jose and his wife Judith, delivered certificates and simple, plain A4 sheets with the names of all the kids who come to Provecenh, thanking us. judith in particular made a short impromptu heartfelt speech thanking us and mentioning how much the kids had been looking forward to playing on the third floor and how much they appreciate all our efforts. Juan Jose drove us to Antigua, sparing us the crowded chicken bus, the wait, the sight of the emaciated homeless dogs and precious time.
I was dropped off, carrying a grodian knot of emotions which included the readiness and desire to start something new and experience something different, but my experience and the people had been so good to me in San Mateo that I knew I would miss them. Now all that remains for me is to visit them before I leave and bring them lots of chocolate as a gift, just as I had promised.
