Casa De Luz, we learned, was built by a group from Spain as an educational center. Funding dried up, and for a long time the building was abandoned. When Casa De Luz took over, Val had the building painted a fun, bright green with beams the color blue. It's a simple construction, about the size of two trailers and subdivided into three sections. Val expressed some concern that we might have small crowds, because she had told her classes their would be American visitors. Some Hondurans, I gather, are pretty shy about showing off their English skills. We spent the morning reviewing flash cards concerning shapes and colors with the three or four girls who came. They spoke somewhat broken English, and I attempted to utilize my ridiculous command of Spanish, but we got by. The girls, who ranged in age from pre-teens through mid-twenties, showed great intelligence and sharpness and demonstrated a flourishing knowledge of the odd conventions of the English language. Shortly before lunchtime, Val returned us to the work site. I had planned to return to Casa de Luz for two more rounds of English classes in the afternoon, but Ed said my water carrying services were needed at the High School and so that would be the focus of the rest of the work day. Oh boy.
After another leisurely lunch (subs, chips, and gatorade again) at the Schubert house, the hard work of keeping the water barrel satisfied began. I recalled the afternoon for a Spiritual Formation class assignment in this way:
One of our projects has been to pour a cement floor in a large room for the new high school in the mountain community of Zambrano (to date the students have been meeting in a crowded local home). This project took us two days to complete, and I volunteered for the job of “water-boy,” carrying large buckets of water about 100 feet to a 55 gallon barrel, which was used to keep the concrete mixer fed. It was hard, hot, painful, endless work, because the water level was constantly being depleted. The first day I was able to keep up pretty well, but the second day it was just a little hotter, and I was significantly more worn down and my feet, hands, and back were throbbing. I was struggling. Adding to my trouble was Emilio, a Honduran man who worked alongside us all day, and was the head of the school’s parent association. Emilio was periodically stealing my buckets of water away, those buckets which I so desperately needed to keep up with my work. He was taking them to aid in another part of the project, which I knew, but that didn’t keep me from getting annoyed with him, nor prevent me from feeling intensely sorry for myself and my “thankless” suffering. I don’t know if Emilio read my mind on one of these occasions, but as he carried a bucket away he turned and said “Muchas gracias,” or “thank you very much” in the Spanish language. For a moment, I felt a tangible weight off my shoulders. My burdens became lighter, and my self-absorption less consuming. This week, I’ve been putting effort into thanking God for all the wonders that He does, but through Emilio I’m learning that one way we thank God is by thanking His those who walk alongside us.
Another saving grace was that the city water came on over lunch time and refilled the piela, thus making for lighter lifting. Otherwise things got steadily more difficult as the afternoon progressed. My hands got so raw that at the end of the day, I was putting half-filled buckets in a wheel barrow just to avoid having to carry the buckets the short distance to the barrel. It is amazing how much small changes of width, like the thin plastic grip that had survived on one of the buckets, or the handles of a wheelbarrow could affect my tolerance of the task. I was relieved when the work day came to its merciful conclusion. While this was only the second work day it proved to be, in my view, the second hardest physically of the whole trip.
After dinner, our team gathered for devotions. I shared then what has become a lasting impression about the two days of cement work at the Zambrano Public High School. It became my conviction that the work of laying down cement floors at a High School was very important Christ-exalting work, striking a blow against a long entrenched evil. To give a little background: hundreds of years ago, Honduras had been colonized by the Spanish who, unfortunately, and to their shame, treated the people as slaves. Though the nation has been independent for quite some time, many Hondurans still regard themselves with a slavish mentality. Generation after generation Hondurans, though physically free, have spent their lives merely trying to survive their poverty, working as day-laborers with little hope for anything beyond the day's refried beans and tortillas. Talents and gifts go utilized. The ruling families have done little to relieve this situation. Even sadder, their own government has contributed precious little to help their brethren. Even though the school we worked on in Zambrano is a public school it had not received a dime, not a centavo, of assistance from their own elected leaders. It seemed to me that in some small way, we struck a blow against an entrenched evil of institutionalized ignorance by laying down a floor for a school. Perhaps some day soon, children will sit in those classrooms and their minds will be stretched in such a way that they will be able to loose the chains of of the bondage of generational poverty. That's my prayer anyway.
