Nora's House

Honduras. Day 8.

Led a house crew today. Thankfully Milton showed up and greatly helped out (I basically handed the house crew over to him). It was an extremely stressful day, but we got the house built, and that’s all that mattered.

I do want to say one thing about it, though. We had to tear down the house on the lot before we could build a new one in its place. And before we could tear it down, we had to go in and take out all of Nora and her children’s stuff.

That was the first time I’ve been in a Hondo house in a long time. And I think i had forgotten just how “real” it really is.

The house was smaller than most Americans’ bathrooms. It was maybe a good 12’ x 8’. In other words, it was tiny. And it was where three people lived.

Every

day

of

their

lives.

And it was dirty. And it smelled. And it was full of bugs. When we moved their “dressers” (which were cardboard boxes with wet, dirty clothes just piled into them), dozens of cockroaches and water bugs scattered. There were places where we had to be careful because tiger ants were crawling around. In most people’s opinion, it was a box full of trash. But to Nora and her sons, it was all they had. And so whether it be carting out a damp, muddy love-seat or the few dirty pots and pans they had, we were careful with their stuff. Because what looked like not that much to us was sacred to them. It was all they had.

Yeah. Today it got real.