Un Techo Para Mi País

I signed up to build houses in Chincha which is a city down south by Ica that was destroyed by a terrible earthquake in August of last year. I signed up with my two roommates Trevor and Michael and a lot of people from their UVA group.

Friday: We went to meet at a stadium at 8pm Friday night but had to get into smaller groups and wait around for buses until about 10pm. There were probably a couple hundred people who volunteer, both Peruvian and foreign. The organization that does this is called "Un techo para mi país which means "A roof for my country." We arrived in Chincha at about 3am and set up our sleeping bags in a church. There were a lot of younger people and the whole experience felt like a weekend at summer camp as a child. My friends and I were really tired and wanted to go to bed but a group of about 20 people stayed up and played games until 5am when they finally turned the lights off and we went to bed.

Saturday: At 7am they started blasting terrible music to get us to wake up and I was very unhappy at that point since I couldn't get to sleep until 5am. We got up, ate some breakfast, brushed our teeth outside and changed into working clothes. Then we had to play "team building" games (again with the summer camp feel), which only made me more annoyed because I could have slept for another hour while people were doing all that. We were split up into groups of 3 people. In my group were two other Peruvians; Carla who was 18 and our leader, and Alonso who was 21 and had also never built a house before. The three of us were supposed to build a house in the two days we were there. At probably 9am we took our tools (shovel, hammer, nails) to the site of our house and we met Luís who we were building the house for. Luís lived in a house with his sisters, some man, nieces and nephews. In a 6 meter by 6 meter house made of bamboo sticks and tarps lived at least 10 people, and for those 10 people we were building 2 6 meter by 3 meter wooden houses. To start the house we had to build a foundation which was three 6 meter boards. We had to level the ground and dig wholes to put the boards into but the ground is made up of clay so digging was really hard. Once those boards were down we nailed the floor panels perpendicularly across the three boards and nails then down by hand. That is all we finished the first day and we were nailing by candle/flashlight because we didn't finish until about 9pm. We were by far the group who worked the latest and had the least amount of our house done because Carla really had NO IDEA what she was doing in building this house. In comparison Trevor’s groups was done at 4:30pm and had put up their walls. We went back to the church to eat dinner which was mashed potatoes, rice and tuna and then we went to bed.

Sunday: We woke up around 8am after sleeping through the blasting music, ate breakfast and went to our site. We started by putting up the pre-constructed walls which didnt really it together correctly so there were spaces in the corners at some points. All the wood we were using was terrible and it was almost impossible to nail through it sometimes so we dipped the nails in cooking oil first (if that helped or not I have no idea). In the afternoon we ate lunch that the family prepared for us on their propane camping stove that they had in their hut. I'm pretty sure it’s a terrible idea to use those inside because the whole place smelled like propane and our food tasted like it too. We just had very simple chicken and rice. The next step of the house was to put up 7 ceiling beams, the roof and then we nailed the walls to the floor. We had a lot of help with the last parts and I basically just played with all the little kids that were running around. The kids were fascinated by my camera and each wanted a turn taking pictures so I have about 20 of the same photo of me holding various babies. In the end I had to tell them that the battery died because I did have to do a little work on the house! We had a littler ceremony with cake and balloons and we gave the family a certificate for the new house and they told us how grateful they were that we did this for them so it was really nice because they seemed so happy. Shortly after we got back on the bus and came back to Lima.