By Cynthia Cusimano

The volunteers have survived their first day of work at the construction site in Talnique, El Salvador. After a lovely orientation to the country over the weekend, they were ready to get to work. The site supervisor as well as the Mayor were there to greet us and the work crews were given their assignments. One crew was pointing the cement bricks which essentially meant that they mixed the cement by hand, took a makeshift trowel from a scrounged piece of flat wood and sealed the cracks between the cement blocks that made up the walls of a house. Thank goodness we all had work gloves.

The second crew were raising cement blocks using team work as they weigh about 15 kilos each. These blocks settled into place to form the walls of another house under constriction.

The volunteers were helped along by the families who are benefitting from the work being done. The women and men from the town have done a tremendous amount of work towards this project.

On our bus trip back down the mountain a unanimous decision was made to stop at a hardware store to upgrade our trowels and pick up a few tools much needed to help the process along.

Everyone is excited to return tomorrow and continue with this project.

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