Hero Holiday

But apparently, a team of Hero Holiday girls can build a house in Mexico in two days. Crazy nuts! Here is a before shot of what the pad looked like yesterday morning, tomorrow I will post a picutre of what it looks like now…you may wait with baited breath.

The team was lead by Girrard, our local Newfie here in the Baja, and they displayed incredible work ethic, matched with skill and some good luck. What a cool opportunity to do more than we expected.

Site two is moving along wonderfully. Today they had a chance to custom-make an out door shower for the family, complete with a run-off pipe to catch the gray water. This water can be used to water their existing plants and fruit trees. Water is scarce here in the desert, the chance to use this water means that their trees will produce more fruit…lots of trees this year are not producing well because of a dryer-than-usual winter. Which, in turn, means fruit full of nutrients and vitimins when food may as well be scarce.

The very beginning of the work on the shower yesterday… a few more students had the expereince of making cement in a wheelbarrow today!

Playing with the local kids on site two.

Today was our first soccer camp. It is the fourth one we, as Hero Holiday, have done this summer with the largest turnout. More than sixty kids came to play, hang out with the Canadians and have a great time. The soccer camps gives the students a chance to learn a bit more about futbol, which indeed we experienced today. There was some of the best live soccer playing I have seen. It is also the opportunity to equalize any power dynamic that may exist. We are here to be with the people we are helping, as well as get to know them; to have them enrich our lives with what we can learn from them. And the soccer camps accomplish this well, it was a great…somewhat windy…morning.

A gust of wind going across the soccer field.

Time for a water break!

This afternoon the students who went to the soccer camp sorted through the donations that were brought down and they made up gift bags. We were able to bring down items like the quilts from the ladies in Penticton who I still miss seeing on Tuesday afternoons quilting up a storm! These quilts are regularly made, and sent, down here to Mexico and are sought after for the chilly, winter desert nights. We will be giving them to the families we are building for this week, as well as going back to the last few builds and giving them something to snuggle into when the days get shorter and the nights longer.

The girls with the gift bags made up.

We also recieved medical supplies, hygeine items, clothes, toys and school supplies. We were chatting with a girl at the soccer camp about school starting on Monday. She was telling us she didn’t have pencils or notebooks. Special bags were made up for her and her siblings. We will be giving the medical supplies to a family who has been trained by a nurse to do immediate first aid as well as general health care. This couple has access to the people living in remote areas and the migrant workers camps who we would not have regular access to, and who, in turn, would not have access to health care. Some school supplies will be given to a man who is running a school in the evenings after work for children who do not have birth registration or who have to stay home during the day to take care of their younger siblings while their mothers go work in the fields.

Crazy, nutty girls after they finished with the gift bags.

It has been a long, fun, purposeful, successful day. There are a bunch of rowdies, who I am proud to call Hero’s, walking by my trailer about to play a wicked game of “Mexican Capture The Flag.” I feel oddly proud of them. Let’s see what tomorrow holds.

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