Hard Work, Rewarding Work

Monday, March 27, 2017

 

 

 

Today was a great day for the Cuba trip! We began the morning at 8:30 with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, bread, and cheese, along with fresh fruits and guava juice. At 9:30, we were off to a Friends Church in a coastal town of Puerto Padre, in the next province over, Las Tunas. The church complex (which formerly included a school) is undergoing a major reconstruction project after suffering major destruction from Hurricane Ike in 2008.

When we got there, we split into two teams. One team went to the front and cleared out a room while the other group went to a lot filled with building debris and started away at the pile of rubble awaiting us. Working alongside members of the church family, we did various tasks, such as breaking up the bricks and stones with pickaxes, as well as using shovels and wheelbarrows for picking up the broken stones. The work included loading all of the debris onto a large truck. This hard work in the scorching sun required us to drink a lot of water to finish the task, but it was very rewarding once we saw the work we had completed.

Once we finished our work, we listened to music and played dancing games before lunch. It was similar to hot potato, but once the music stopped whoever was holding the stick we were passing had to go into the center of the circle and complete a task, like singing, dancing, or even improv poetry. Our lunch consisted of roast pork, rice and beans, tomatoes, and boniato, a root vegetable similar to potatoes. We finished our work early, so we were invited to take a spontaneous trip to the beach. The ride was long and bumpy, but well worth it. We arrived to find rays of sunshine hitting the crystal blue water and a perfect sea breeze. While there, we found many shells and coral. We returned for a late dinner at 8:30 then relaxed by reading, chatting or playing card games before bed. All in all, we had a great day working and bonding.

Tomorrow morning we will resume working here at the church in Holguín before exploring the town and doing a little shopping. There are no pictures with this blog entry due to technical difficulties, but we hope to make up for it tomorrow.

¡Hasta mañana!

 

Map credit: By Dэя-Бøяg [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons