Day 9: Third Day at Orfanto Jehova-Jirah

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Journal Entry by Alison Schatz

Today is our third day at Orfanto Jehova Jirah, the orphanage in San Salvador where we are building a shelter to move the kitchen into. We spent the last two days digging up dirt and rocks to make the ground level and today we plan to pour the cement floor. We left a pile of sweaty work shirts at the Alamo to be washed and then piled into the bus for another day of work.

We arrived at the orphanage and discovered that there was still no wheelbarrow for us to work with. Using only the buckets to transport sand, gravel and cement was going to be very slow, back breaking work. Slightly demoralized by this thought, three of us headed into town and picked up a wheelbarrow while the others stayed behind to dig up a small tree that was in the way of the floor. Our bus driver was very helpful and took us to a hardware shop where we bought our new best friend, a wheel barrow that we fondly named “the little red that could”.

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When the contractors arrived, they told us that they wanted to put up the roof today instead of laying the floor. This was not good news for us! We were all eager to work and wanted to see some progress made on the project. Luckily we were able to discuss the problem with them (using Uliana’s fabulous Spanish) and decided that we would cover the floor tonight after we laid it incase of rain.

We began the work today by digging a trench to put the drainage pipe into and putting a hole into the stone wall for the pipe to go through. Next, we began to mix cement. We poured six wheelbarrows full of sand, two of gravel and a bag of cement onto the ground near the work site. The contractors showed us how to combine this dry mixture by shoveling the entire pile a few times. They made a well in the centre and poured in four buckets of water. Finally, they combined the concrete by gradually shoveling the dry mixture into the centre and mixing it all again. The contractors did this quickly and efficiently and were amazing to watch. Our attempts to mix the concrete were very clumsy and slow, especially at first.

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The contractors we were working with were very nice, but a little taken aback at our eagerness to help at first. Once they realized that the “chicas” could do work as well as the men and that we were willing to do the hard labour they were much more appreciative of our efforts. When we started our work in the morning, we were pretty slow and disorganized. As the day continued, we turned our chaos into some impressive team work. We divided up into groups for shoveling sand and gravel, mixing the concrete, shoveling the mixed concrete and Sandy, who spent the afternoon pushing the wheelbarrow. Of course the star of the day was “Little Red”! We were working quickly by the end of the day and as it grew dark, the contractors stayed late with us so we managed to finish the floor!

Before leaving we played some soccer with the kids at the orphanage. They were all way better than us! Some of the boys came and explored the van—we had a hard time tearing them away from it. We all had tons of fun playing with the kids, and seeing them everyday makes us realize how amazing they are and how thankful we are that we are able to help them.

A zillion photos later, after dinner at Subway (we were HUNGRY!) and showers some of us headed out to the karaoke and to the disco with Otto, Lombardo and Alejandro while others stayed behind and went to bed early. What a great day!