My name is Matías Larrique, I am from Montevideo, Uruguay, one of the smallest countries in South America and I'm 17 years old. Last year I was invited to participate on a construction of 30 houses in the middle of what we call here “cantegriles”, or “villa miseria”, which in English would be something like “misery town”. This is where a big percentage of the people of Montevideo live, and they live in extreme poverty conditions. This people most of the times have nothing to eat, nor where to live, so that is what we are trying to change. Step by step, an organization called “A roof for my country” (“Un techo por mi país”) has been building houses for this poor people, calling for the help of high school and university students. The construction lasts just one weekend, and the adventure started like this…
19th of October of 2007
It was a very lovely spring day, and there was a mixture of scare and happiness on the students faces. Must of us had never got into a neighborhood like the one we were being taken. Remember most of us came from private schools, and lived in what I call our “bubbles”, referring to the protection of our parents, private securities, etc.
It was Friday night when we arrived at a school near this neighborhood. This was the school where we would stay to slip that night and the next one, and where dinner was served for us both nights. We all arrived very happy, and full of questions like: How are this people? How do they dress like? Am I going to like them? All those questions were going to be answered on the next day, when we would finally meet the family which we would work with. That night, we were presented to our construction partners and after having dinner, we had a lesson on how to build the house, since we had never done anything similar before. My partners resulted being excellent people, and it took us very few minutes to make friends. Before that, I did not know anyone of them.
20th of October of 2007
Very early in the morning the people from the organization woke us up, with loud music and shouting. We had slept over the cold and hard floor, so our backs hurt, and we were all sneezing. After breakfast, a bus took us to the place were we were building the house.
Everybody there was sleeping after our arrival. When we descended from the bus, the doors of the houses began to open, and everybody was looking on us as if we were extraterrestrials, wearing nice t-shirts, new shoes, etc. Every construction group walked to the place where they had to build the house. A construction group is formed by about 8 students and a tutor. The family for which we were building the house wasn't actually a family; it was just a woman called Disma, whose family had abandoned her. I have to admit she was a bit crazy, so I could understand her family a bit.
That day we began making some holes on the ground, to make the bases of the house. After this we had lunch. The organization brought raw pasta, and it was supposed to be cooked by the woman, but as she didn't have a house, some neighbor had to cook it. There we met Daniel, the neighbor. He was very helpful on the construction of the house. He admitted having been in prison once, but he said he had changed. After lunch, we built the floor of the house, covering it with an isolating paint for humidity. The problem there was that there is no trust between neighbors, so Disma was quite scarred about the fact that the pieces of the house could be stolen during the night.
After this we returned to the school, and shared the experiences of the first day with our friends, who were building another houses. In the school we had dinner and went to sleep afterwards, because we were really tired.
21st of October of 2007
Waking up that day was horrible. We were very tired, we had slept over hard and cold stone, and another tiring day was about to begin. Again the same story, we had breakfast, a bus took us to the construction site, etc.
Now we had a bit more confidence with Disma, the old woman, and with Daniel, the neighbor. Fortunately, no piece of the house was stolen, and we found it in the same conditions we had left it the previous day.
That day we spent the morning raising the walls. That wasn't a difficult job, as they were pre-fabricated. We decided to eat with the neighbors again that midday, so we raised some money and bought some sausages, which Daniel's wife cooked.
On the afternoon, we nailed the metallic roof to the walls, we put the windows and the door, and that was it, the house was done.
After having finished the house, we had to wait some hours before leaving. So we were just walking around neighborhood, without any scare of being robbed, as we now know they are common people, with nice attitudes, who simply weren't lucky in socio-economical matters. We had the opportunity during those hours to be spectators of a horse race, in which Daniel participated and won.
In the end we made a ceremony in which the keys of the house were given to Disma, and she had to sign an agreement which prohibited her from selling the house before the first two years.
Interesting facts about the experience
- The cost of the house was of $20000 (1000 dollars), but they were sold to the poor people for just $2.000 ($200 dollars). Imagine the situation in which they live. Many families could afford paying those 200, and we are talking about buying a house, not the new X-Box.
- Building the houses was actually an excuse to break the barriers between poor people and the ones with a better standard of life. Not only we eliminated our prejudice about them, but also we gave a good impression to them about the young boys from the private schools.
- We had to pay for the whole experience just $40 (2 dollars). This is quite cheap; if you take into account they gave us food and transportation for a whole weekend.
- None of the students was stolen or attacked during the weekend. We had a wrong idea of what poor people would do to us. That my friends, is called prejudice.
- In the end of the weekend, we all felt really thankful for the great economical possibilities that we were given, but we also learned that money isn't everything. Sometimes an experience like this is necessary to understand the meaning of that phrase.
