Journal Bits - Monday January 21st 2008

(taken from bits of my journal)…I thought yesterday was an eye opener of sorts but today was even more so. The village we went into to work today, El Modelo, was basically a desert with various shacks modeled as homes. It was filthy. From the moment we entered the village there was trash and debris everywhere. The homes, if you could call them such, were built with trash bags and other plastics to keep the sand/dust out. Some had built some of the walls out of mud. Trash was everywhere. The kids swarmed us almost immediately and played around us as we did construction throughout the day. These kids had desperation on many of their faces. Some looked as though they had been in the same clothes for many days. Some of the younger children wore only a shirt. The dirt was caked to the faces of many and you could tell there was no such thing as bathing. Though these kids had nothing at all they still had many characteristics of any child. They still played, laughed, bullied and communicated as most children. I could see they were happy to have the contact we brought into the village. Many of the kids ran around with no shoes and what lay on the ground was rock, glass, metal and many dangerous things we would never allow our kids to play around even with shoes on…

-Danny