This morning I went to a housing
dedication near Santiago de Maria. For those of you who aren't
familiar with Habitat's processes, a housing dedication is when a
finished home is presented to the family. Before they started the
ceremony, Patty and I walked into the newly finished house to take a
look. Patty asked if I would like my picture taken in the house and I
said, “Of course!” I went and sat on a concrete table attached to
the wall in the family room. A little girl ran up to me. I figured
she wanted to get in the picture. Instead she put her finger on the
table and lifted it up to show it had just been painted. The fact I
was wearing white seersucker shorts didn't help the situation. At
least I got to take a part of their house back home with me.
Jorge Monlina, Habitat's Executive
Director in El Salvador gave a great analogy in his speech at the
dedication. That a home is to a family as dirt is to a tree. You can
give a tree an optimal mix of sunlight and water, but if it has no
dirt to grow its roots, it's as good as dead. That a family without a
home will never yield fruit and give back to society. A family needs
a place to grow its roots.
Habitat El Salvador provides the
foundation for the family by providing a house. But just as a young
tree rooted in the ground needs sunlight and water, a developing
family needs skills and knowledge to grow and eventually yield fruit.
Through financial education, leadership training, community
development and economic development, the developing family grows
strong and helps support a healthy eco-system. Habitat El Salvador's
holistic housing solutions does this.
After the ceremony ended, the new
homeowners of a brand new Habitat house showed me their old house. It
was a shelter covered with steel sheets. The inside had a dirt floor
and it was extremely hot in there. The grandma and her three
granddaughters glowed with happiness and peace. Their standard of
living had just skyrocketed. A dirt-floor shack to an
earthquake-proof, well-insulated, steel-reinforced Habitat house.
This family is moving out of the hell shack and into the house of
their dreams.
After saying goodbye to everyone at the
ceremony, we headed to Santiago de Maria. We went to a different
temporary settlement this time. The previous settlement was built on
an old coffee processing plant and many of the shelters had concrete
floors. This settlement today was further up the mountain and all the
shelters had dirt floors. There were signs of water erosion on the
floors in the houses which no doubt was from rainwater flowing down
the mountain and into their shelters.
Armando, the community's leader, showed
us around. He told us about how people here don't believe that
they're going to receive help. He said that us being there helps to
renew their hope. That it helps them believe that they just might
finally be taken to the promise land. After 12 years of broken
promises, its only natural that they are skeptical.
I entered one lady's home and she
showed me a very large gap in the roof that lets rainwater in. She
took advantage of the problem and started collecting rainwater for
washing clothes and such. The stairway leading up to her house would
be any mom's worst nightmare. Certainly not the safest environment
for a toddler as the stairs looked more like a rock cliff. She's
raising three children in the shelter and she was as proud as could
be. I asked her if I could take a picture of the food she was cooking
and she insisted that she should be in the picture as well.
After touring the shelter, entering
homes and talking with its residents, Armando talked about his son.
Out of all the kids in the settlement, only his son went to college.
He's in his third year and studying business administration. He wakes
up at 4:30 in the morning, takes a bus to San Salvador where he
attends college and gets back to the community at 8pm. He spends four
hours a day on a bus. Armando then talked about how tough the kids
are in the settlement. That they could have ten kinds of sicknesses
and act like it's nothing. Last he said that it was his hope that the
new community be built before he passed, if not for him, for the
children.
As we rode home the Habitat El Salvador
associates I was with talked about the visit to the settlement.
Lindsey, a former Peace Corp field worker who saw intense poverty for
2 years said that she had never seen so many people concentrated in
one area that were living in conditions that horrible. Hana, another
former Peace Corp field worker gave a great observation by viewing
what it must be like for the moms there. Like how am I going to feed
my children? How am I going to keep living? What's my son doing while
I'm gone? She noted that they just keep fighting and they accept you
with smiles and open arms, even thought they've been let down so
much. Truly these people deserve better.
I saw two extremes today. I saw a
family who was glowing with happiness move into a new home. Their
roots planted in the ground and ready to reach new heights. Then I
saw a community who is living in conditions that are inhumane. Who's
only wish is to have a permanent place to call home, a place that can
serve as a strong foundation for greater things.
This is one of the families who the dedication was for. In El Salvador, when they do a dedication, they do it for multiple families cause they build so many homes. This family was lucky, cause the dedication location was at their house. I got to give them a Bible and the keys to their new house. It was an awesome experience that I'll never forget.
The old house
Second settlement
Watch your step
Armando is the man!
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