3 - Habitat for Humanity Guatemala - June 2009 - Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Boy Scout Troop 845
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 03:22PM During a typical day we arrive at the worksite at 8am, and the sun is already rising high and the temperature is climbing just as fast. One team sifts sand out of gravel while another team uses impossibly short shovels (everyone here is a foot shorter than us) to mix mortar by hand. The mortar mixing is a rather tough job as it takes about 20 minutes of mixing by turning over chunks of mix and water that gets ever heavier as the batch progesses. At other times we moved 400 cement blocks up a muddy hill and restack them into the rooms of the house and later use hachets and machetes to shape them into the size block that we need. I dare say standard US scout skills do not cover how to properly and safely shape cement blocks with machetes.