We Built Four Houses

After 12 hours and 200+ miles on pot-holed, single-lane-bridge roads it was no surprise that there was no internet connectivity at our worksite.  Mike, a Boston College grad who is a  Peace Corps volunteer here, worked hard to share his cellular USB plug-in, but to no avail.   Then, just when I'd given up, another team member found a backstreet internet cafe.  But the service was so slow that blogging just wasn't possible.  Ten days later, we're back in the capital city of Antananarivo.  So here I am!

We built four houses, with four of us assigned to each home.  Starting from the foundations, we worked with local construction specialists and the homeowners.  And, in addition to the 17 of us, we had four Peace Corps volunteers who built with us and served as translators.  What a great addition to our team!  We were masons for the week, building walls of brick and mortar.   The house I worked on is a small, two-room structure that will have a tin roof.  And there will be no electricity or plumbing.  My new buddy was Tovo, a local Habitat for Humanity staffer; the two of us worked side-by-side.  And below is a picture of three of six children who will occupy this new home, as well as the mom, who was right there with us, mixing mortar and throwing bricks.  We couldn't pronounce her name, so we called her 'Water Lily', the english translation.  She's a guide in the National Park, so she led us to lemurs on our Sunday off.

We took every room in the small hotel where our team stayed.  We had occasional hot water and heard each other through the walls, and it was home.   The people in Ranamofana were absolutely wonderful, with kids helping do the work.  And we got the job done.  The walls were up and it was almost time for the roofs at the end of our stay.   It was a great time, and we ended it with a big party.  By then there had been two other celebrations.  First for my birthday on October 2, and then Lisa's 50th! on October 6.  And, as always with these 'builds', it was SO hard to say goodbye.