Concrete and Hamburguesas

Today we defined what it means to be a mans man.

The day started out as usual at La Vina, after an early morning breakfast the team packed up the portable kitchen and split up. Those who stayed behind did soft activities like sort donations before heading out to Stone "Island" (it's more of an inlet thing that looks like an island from mazatlans shores) via boat which only takes about 15 minutes. Joel, Ryan, Dan Johanson and myself, Daniel Opden Dries, headed out to the community with Dave in the back of the work truck which is definitely the long way at about an hour and a half commute.

After a few stops for supplies we arrived in the community we would be serving. The rest of the team was waiting in the under construction feeding/education center playing badminton and soccer with some of the local kids.

We were quickly briefed and put to work. About half of the team started up the kitchen while the rest of us began construction.

My first detail followed naturally after unloading the scaffolding we'd travelled with to the site. We set it up in the center which had a second floor poured sometime in the past month or two. Some of the moulds that had been used to pour the second floors cement supports were still stuck to the roof. Our job was to climb two stories of rickety scaffolding tear the large pallet sized moulds down using crowbars. It got pretty intense at times.

After myself and a few others brought some to the ground we moved on and began mixing cement. Since the the community has a boy in a wheelchair they wanted to add a ramp for him to get in. So we got to it, mixing up what felt like 5 tons of cement and helping La Vina's cement master Hosea make the center wheel chair accessible. Pete almost got heatstroke.

Around the time we finished pouring the wheelchair ramp the hamburgers had been cooked and serving was ready to begin. Despite a few line jumpers and the usual antics of the kids things went off without a hitch and everyone left satisfied. We also did the usual candy for garbage trade to get the lunch mess cleaned up. It went well but almost proved to be an to intense a motivator for the kids and we could barely keep up with swarm looking to get a sugar fix.

We got thing settle down, and cleaned up though in the end. By this time it was late in the afternoon and we were all ready to call it a day.

Everyone but Trent and myself headed back to the mainland/hotel via boat. The two of us stayed back with Dave and after a few more heavy, nail studded moulds made clattered to the floor we loaded up the scaffolding and supplies and headed in the truck for our hour and a half journey home.