Mexico 2019 | Day 4 Blog

By: Corrine Tilstra

Today started out with the rice breakfast pudding, then off to the seniors home while the construction crew worked on the site. I kept busy with meal prep, some painting and sorting beans. It seems as if there’s always laundry, laundry and more laundry to be done at the home, in addition to doing some of our teams laundry.

I road along to the dump with Brendan to see for myself if people actually live there- and yes they do! Digging through the garbage for something of use. Very unpleasant smell, as it’s always burning.

Luckily, I didn’t see any children but that doesn’t mean they don’t live there

By: Heather Leong

I woke up this morning with a bit soreness from our first day working at the seniors home. A hot shower and some yoga back bends later, I went down to get some coffee from the eating area at Casa Hogan Bienvenidos. I’m greeted by everyone I pass with a “beunos dias.”

At home I would be leaving for work at the office. Here, the bus has just arrived from picking up the thirty plus children who spend their day here in school while their parents are away at work. The children file past our group on their way to breakfast. They all hold hands and high five us as the pass.

After breakfast we head off to the job site. I’m helping to cut forms for steel beams. The job site is split up into splinter cells with each group managing a different task. Our goal is to get as much done as humanly possible in the five days we are here.

The seniors home has a need for a wheelchair/bed accessible shower. When we arrived the room had four walls, with no roof, and a dirt floor with lines marking where the plumbing will go.

The team working on plumbing dug out the holes and layed the pipes for the cistern the first day. Today they built the cistern. What amazes me is how quickly everything is getting done. The team is working endlessly from sun up to sun down to get the job done. It has only been two days but it feels like it has been a week.

The end of the day saw the guys rushing to beat the sunset to get the forms in place for the next day. Like the children linked in the morning. Our work day ended with the guys linked on the form.