FHF Mexico

Well, in addition to seriously struggling to get everything back on track after Christmas break, it's taken me a while to publish this post because I've felt some anxiety about how to accurately describe this experience.  Wish me luck.

First, some background.  Families Helping Families Mexico is a small nonprofit organization run by 3 Americans who have other jobs and oversee the charity in their spare time.  They provide high-quality, low-cost housing to struggling families in the coastal town of Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), Mexico.  They have an employee in Puerto Penasco who takes care of much of the day-to-day running of the organization, plus a crew of "muchachos" who work year-round building houses.

FHF Mexico strives to create healthy neighborhoods by establishing clusters of small houses, and finding good families to live there.  They build, finish, and furnish houses with three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen/dining/living room, and a washing machine.  They have an extensive process for selecting families to occupy the houses, and require families to follow 3 rules during a probationary period: they must pay a low monthly rate, they must be good neighbors, and they may not do drugs.  If they break the rules, occupants are kicked out (though there is some leniency in the payment), but if occupants abide by the rules then they will own their house outright after 10 years.

The organizatoin has been around long enough that this pattern has been deemed successful, and there are several homeowners in their neighborhoods.  There is extreme poverty in the area, but the organizers have found that most of the people who want to work and live healthy lives (not do drugs) are able to do so, so they focus on people who are going through tough times but trying to do what's right.  They like to say that they're giving a hand-up, not a hand-out.

Where does the Christmas project fit in?  Every year, the organizers set aside three days right after Christmas for families to come build houses.  The goal for those three days is to get the cinder block walls finished (all the exterior walls and one interior) and the roof built.  (The families do not do any of the finish work - the stucco, painting, plumbing, tiling, and electrical work, etc., is done by the muchachos and various local contractors during the year.)  The muchachos were also there with us while we were building to start the cinder block corners of each house and make sure we were doing things correctly.  About 40-50 volunteers worked on each house.

DAY 1

We took this picture as the introductory meeting was getting started.
You can see pallets of cinder block behind us, and behind that, a finished house.

One of our first tasks was to place these flags at the corners of the FHF neighborhood.

Laying block!

Mixing mortar.

Pouring concrete.

If you're not dirty, you're not working.

Cat did a lot of cutting and bending rebar, and Eliza helped too.

I took this picture a couple of hours before we finished on the first day.
Our house is in the foreground and the other group's house is in the background.

DAY 2

Cat putting her rebar to good use reinforcing one of the layers of cinder block.

The walls were tall enough on the second day that
we were using scaffolding...

...though perhaps not in a manner OSHA would approve of.

The kids took breaks to play with some of the local children.
Here they're playing Pato, Pato, Ganso.

We brought jump ropes and soccer balls to share -
the jump ropes were a hit!

We ended earlier on the second day, and watched as a family was given a

finished FHF Mexico house.  It was touching to witness.

This is the finished, furnished house that was given away.

The family included a mom and three kids.  They'd just found out

the day before that they would have a house and not have to keep

moving around, as they'd been doing the last few years.

They were understandably very emotional.

DAY 3

Placing wood to be used as trusses for the roof.

Taking a break to play Jumanji.

Helping to cut wood for the trusses.

Hammering plywood on the other house's front porch.

Lunch came to us that day - we had two options: a couple selling tamales,
and a family selling fresh carne asada tacos, with a grill set up right on the site.

My pictures don't reflect how many people - mostly children and teenagers -
were hammering plywood on the roof.  By the time the wood was all up there,
there were at least 2 dozen hammers going.

This is the inside of the house we built.  Not bad.

The whole group who worked on this house!
(We started out with a smaller group, but some of the families working
on the other house weren't being included in the work so they joined us.)

The evolution of our house at the end of each workday:

This was definitely a positive experience for our family.  I still haven't reconciled my expectations and the reality of the project.  I hoped it would be intense and gritty, that we would have three full days of dirty, sweaty physical labor.  It wasn't that at all.  This was a laid-back environment where we were expected to work, but we weren't expected to work constantly - it was fine to take breaks and work at any pace. The boys were free to sit in the van and eat snacks or just play with their new friends; the girls took a little time to play with neighborhood children; and I shopped at the cars of the locals who'd brought their wares to the site to sell to volunteers.

I was disappointed.  I was afraid that the relaxed atmosphere would be less impactful than an intense one would have been.  Perhaps that's true, but I also realize that an intense work environment could have been too much for the kids, especially the boys, and they might have been miserable.  The laid-back nature of the project definitely made it a more fun, positive experience.  Time will tell if it was also memorable, but I think that it was different enough from everything else we've ever done, that we'll all remember it.

Side Note: Perhaps I looked forward to a physically demanding experience for the kids because I remember with fondness the many service projects I did as a teenager, both with my Ward/Stake and with high school groups.  They were often some of my favorite activities, because of the physical exertion, the opportunity to make a difference, and the camaraderie of working together.  But it occurred to me while we were working in Mexico that my kids haven't had those experiences.  They haven't had to do hurricane clean-up, they haven't painted a school in the poor part of town, they haven't even done yardwork on the temple grounds.  (Though Jack and his peers in the YM did help refinish the floor of the bishop's storehouse last year.)  Anyway, I'm really glad that they could work on this project and that we were able to be there together.