House rebuilt

Most of Thursday afternoon had the student volunteers back up the 134 steps at the sight of the rebuilding. Some students held the walls in place while the carpinter measure, re-measured, leveled, re-adjusted, and finally secured the walls. One side of the wall was attached directly to the neighbor´s concrete and brick wall but the other side was only secured to the next piece of wall. It was a slow, painstaking process. Most of the rest of us continued leveling the floor and removing rock. We had made a fair bit of progress on the boulder but there was more back breaking rock breaking to be done.
One of the things that constantly struck me as bizarre was the fact that there was a bathroom which was ¨permanent,¨ and, all the while it stood exposed to full view. It had a concrete base, a toilet bowl with no seat, and a singular pipe which topped off at about 5 feet. It was not much but it was better than many huts in the pueblos jovenes that I had been in in Peru back in 1990. There is stood, in full view, as we worked around it.
There was some urgency by later Thursday afternoon to get enough of the walls up to have the family back sleeping in the house for the night. The main culprit in the slow-down? The boulder. Despite all the work done, it was still in the way, blocking the correct alignment of the wall. Thus, when we left Thursday, the two back walls were not in place at all and had to be supported by beams.
Naturally, Friday morning we were anxious to finish the job. The delay? The rock. It was hard, tedious work. As we looked around we saw how much more elevated the walls would be in some places due to the uneveness of the ground (which was also the floor). Later, we were told, when everything was in place, the family would have to move rocks into place to fill the gap.
Another delay was the discussion between Brother James and the family on how they wanted to change he original plan. In any case, there was a lot of down time, so we watched the World Cup on the television the family had brought back into the house (Holand was winning). Most of the waiting was for the removal of the boulder. Often we thought how easily and quickly the job would be done in the US with a power tool. But there was none to be had and human labor, while slower, is much cheaper in Peru.
By lunch time we hoped to be done for we were not supposed to return in the afternoon. But we did return after lunch to help with making windows and doors. They were very basic: A wooden fram onto which cheap tongue and groove pieces of wood were attached. We nailed things into place and Jorge came with a circular saw to cuts the ends evenly. When we returned down the hill for a meeting between our students and those of Fe y Alegria, the roof was the only element that had yet to be completed.
Back down at Fe y Alegria 26, the other hall of the group was meeting with students, going into classes, and playing a great deal. They also identified a relatively easy project to work on. The name of the school was painted on the brick wall half way up the hill that we were working on. As one sat at the bottom, it was clear that the letters, each over six feet tall, needed to be repainted. So, our immersion trip members spent much of the time repainting the letters and renewing ¨Fe y Alegria.¨