Trip day 4

No welcoming ceremony today, just straight to work!  Yesterday we got what we thought was 90% done on our stove, and we told the woman of the house that we would be back tomorrow to finish it.  When we got there, we showed it to Don Pauli, our mason, and the HSP coordinator, and they told us that Don Pauli would do the rest, we were done with that stove.  I felt weird leaving it at that stage, and felt bad for telling the lady we would finish it then leaving, but they explained it to her and I guess everything was okay.  Honestly, she would probably rather have a professional finish it anyway.  So off we went to the next site.  We had to hike up this somewhat steep footpath that was very slippery and branches kept slapping us in the face, it felt like we were in the jungle.  Our next house was a shock to us, there was  big white concrete house, and we were building the stove in a corrugated metal shack in the courtyard.  It was explained to us earlier in the week that a lot of places have more than one family living in them, which was the case here, and that a lot of men go abroad to make money and send it home for a nice house.  It was also explained that part of their culture sometimes prevented them from moving into these houses until the man came home to Guatemala.  That seemed to be the case here, we went into some of the rooms to get  building materials, and they were finished but appeared to be used only for storage right now.  Some of the bricks were in the kitchen of this house, and although it was big and had lots of counters and a sink, there was no stove or oven.  So, I suspect our sove will still be in use even after they eventualy move in.  I didn´t notice until halfway through the day that the current stove was on a cliff right over where we were.  They took this slipery and treatcherous looking footpath up this narrow area between the white house and the side of the mountain to get to a shack with no roof and only 3 walls, hardly ideal.  My team got switched up a bit or the day, the teenager in our group realy wanted to interact with some of the local kids, and there were none on our site, so she traded groups, but it worked out great in the end.  We got Krysta, and boy did we need her!  She was the only one of us strong enough to carry the puma, the gravel we use to fill the middle of the stove.  It turns out there was some problem with the delivery to this house, and we only had half as much puma as we needed, so the girl there went off and about 10 minutes later came back with some more.  We told her we needed more still, and she looked horriied.  She made some exasperated motion up the hill and Krysta went with her, figuring she was asking for help.  A LONG while later they come back down the road, each with a bag of puma on their back, and the girl with a pitchfork type rake in her hand.  Krysta explained to us that they had to hike up the mountain, DIG the puma out of the side of the mountain, bag it up, then hike back down.  No wonder she looked so horrified when we said we needed more!!!!  I think Krysta was the only one of the three of us that could have handled that.  Plus she´s fun, so we were glad to have her.  She also was much better at talking with the families, which I tend not to do as well and is an important part of the mission here, connecting with the people and not just building something and running out of town.  Yes, I know I am Miss Social, but I let the langage barrier get in my way and get in the mode of working and forget to talk to them.We managed to finish our stove by the end of that first day with a few mintues to spare even, and that despite the puma incident and a little rain.  This year we split into 3 groups, and there are 8 stoves to go.  We have a day and a half of stove building to go, but in the first two days we have completely finished 4, and are 75% done on the other two.  I think we will for sure finish today, which may translate into more free time tomorrow.  Wonder what we will do.