Theresa Heath

My name is Theresa Heath, I’m a long-term volunteer at Common Hope’s Family Development Center in Antigua, Guatemala. About a month ago, the volunteers in Antigua had the opportunity to travel to a small town in a region of Guatemala called Quiche, a predominately Mayan area. Here is my description of that experience.

As soon as I heard that we were going on a trip to build houses in a small community, I was so excited. For someone who usually works in the office in front of a computer, working outside in a new part of the country would be a welcome change.

After traveling five hours through countless mist- and jungle-covered mountain passes, we arrived in the town of Santa Cruz del Quiche. We dropped our overnight gear in one of the rooms and immediately set off for the village where we would be working. We drove down the highway, piled in the back of two pickup trucks. It was smooth sailing until we turned off the main road onto one of the rockiest and bounciest “roads” I have ever experienced. After some tail-bone-crushing bumps, we descended into the village, right next to a rough looking soccer field where we were told we would play a casual game with people from the village during our stay.

The village of Chicabracan and its houses are set in the middle of the fields where the people work. We stopped at the village’s church, where the community was meeting. A group of people immediately came out to greet us, and the women were wearing their traditional skirts and huipiles, a traditional woven blouse. Each region has its own colorful, intricate design. Don Tomás, our interpreter, welcomed us and introduced himself as a worker for the town's Board of Women. It was these indigenous Mayan women who had realized the need for a change in their housing and had found a way to approach Common Hope to ask for our support.

The houses where they lived were made of bricks of mud and straw and had dirt floors. I would not realize how hard they were until we began to dig to lay the floor later in the morning. We divided into 4 groups, each comprised of a mixture of construction workers and volunteers. We spent the first day making the floor. Each house was to have a mobile floor, made of cement slabs that had to be precisely laid. The task is a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially because those cement slabs are HEAVY. It took us all morning and until 4 in the afternoon to finish, before heading back to town to avoid the afternoon rain and the inevitably muddy road that Matt, Common Hope's Housing Director, assured us would be nearly impossible to travel if we were caught in the village.

The next day, while our floors dried, we met to play a little soccer. What I thought was going to be a bit of a scrimmage turned into a 90 minute game, complete with a referee and uniforms, which were provided by Chicabracán’s town team. Needless to say, we suffered a loss. But it was certainly fun to be a girl playing that day, an oddity to be sure. The energy was wonderful and those who didn’t play kept the children of the village busy with games like “Duck, Duck, Grey Duck.” After a dinner in town, we all fell into bed completely exhausted.

The final day we limped to our houses to build the walls and roof. I added to my general soreness by banging my fingernail with a hammer. It was a tough day, but the generosity of the people as they served us snacks and a lunch of great spicy chile made it all so worthwhile. As some groups finished before others, those that could actually move spread out to get the job done. After we finished, we headed back to the church to clean up and say our good-byes.

The thanks we received was heart-felt. As we shook hands and hugged our hosts, I felt so thankful for this opportunity to work with my fellow volunteers and the Common Hope Guatemalan construction and carpenter staff. I was also thankful for the opportunity to work within the village. Although deeply affected by the civil war, its people have continued struggling, working to provide better housing and health for their children, while maintaining their indigenous identity. Eventually, my bruisezs will fade and my banged fingernail will grow out, but this experience will always stay with me.

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