'Fantastic experience' building homes in Honduras

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By John Curry

EMC News - It was hot - 30 degrees in the daytime. It was eight hours a day of manual labour, helping to build three new homes in Honduras in Central America under Habitat for Humanity's Global Village program. And yet members of the team of 24 volunteers involved loved it.

"It was just a fantastic experience," said William Passmore of Stittsville in describing the week-long trip to Honduras last November at a presentation at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Stittsville last Sunday after the church's 10:30 a.m. service.

He said that those involved in the construction of three homes certainly received as much as they gave during the project, getting to work alongside Honduran tradesmen and visiting Honduran homes, a school and a cathedral.

"What a privilege and what a joy," he said as he summed up the experience.

Indeed, the setting on a site surrounded by mountains was awesome in itself.

"I felt we were building homes in paradise," Mr. Passmore said in recalling the building site.

The Global Village team of 24 began the construction of three homes, part of a projected 14 home build project that is adjacent to a number of homes already built. The homes were built with concrete foundations, suitably reinforced since Honduras is an earthquake prone country. The homes are 500 square foot two-bedroom bungalows with block walls and timber frame roofs.

In their five days on the build site, this team which include Mr. Passmore and his wife Mary poured the foundations, all by hand, and, working with local masons, had erected the walls about halfway up.

Local workers have since completed the homes.

The team members stayed in a local hotel during their stay in Honduras and bussed to the site each day of the project.

Dug trenches for the foundation greeted them when they first arrived on the site, with some of the team helping on the housing site and others going to a nearby site where the rebar to strengthen the foundation and link it to the block walls was assembled.

All of the concrete had to be mixed and poured by hand and all of the blocks used had to be moved on the site by hand as well.

For all five days working on the site, mixing concrete was always ongoing, either for the foundations or for the mortar to go between the wall blocks. But this meant the constant hauling of buckets.

"It's a little like building the pyramids," Mr. Passmore observed.

"We did a lot of shoveling dirt," Mary Passmore added but said that despite the 30 degree heat, they all had a lot of fun doing the work. Indeed, Mary herself became something of an expert at sifting the sand, an important task since sifted sand was essential for creating the mortar used between the blocks.

Although none of the team members knew each other well before leaving on this trip, just attending some organizational meetings, they bonded quickly on the trip.

It was just amazing how 24 people can work so well together and make such a build possible, said Erik Damsbaek, one of those who was part of the team, noting that the group became very close in just the one week of working together.

Besides labouring on the project each day, the team also visited a local school and enjoyed a lunch at a local home.

Team members had taken with them items such as soccer balls and uniforms, toothbrushes and toothpaste, school supplies and skipping ropes, all of which they donated to those at the one-room school which housed students across six grade levels.

They also visited a local fruit plantation, played (and lost) a couple of soccer games to local youngsters and did crafts with some children and their mothers.

Mr. Passmore was particularly impressed with one local youth who inquired about their names and then the next day showed up with handsome wooden nameplates for all 24 team members. That he could produce such work so quickly caused Mr. Passmore, at the presentation last Sunday, to predict great things for him in the future.

Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, occurred during the team's trip and so the team held a small Remembrance Day ceremony which Mr. Passmore described as very moving. He and his wife Mary read "In Flanders Fields" at the ceremony.

Hundreds of local residents, especially children, attended the team's closing ceremony which included piñata bashing and an exchange of signed flags.

Team member Erik Damsbaek, who joined the project because he was looking for adventure and something different, admits that it resulted in him experiencing an incredible feeling of belonging to a team.

He also liked learning about another culture and of how others lived, noting that in Honduras people live very simple lives but ones in which they exhibit a joy of life.

Mary Passmore admits that at the beginning she was unsure of how she would contribute on the trip.

"I think I surprised myself," she told those at the presentation, saying that she had a lot of fun. While she admits that she did not have all the language skills necessary to communicate, she said that she managed to connect with Honduran people through eye contact and body gestures.