CAP Day 1 (Day 10)

Hola from Monte Coca, and Wythe + Demarcus!

Today was the first day of our CAP project, Wohoo! But we were ready and prepared, waking up at 7:00 (without music, sadly, just knocking on doors). Breakfast was at 8:00 this morning, which was cereal. We had Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes with a few different varieties of milk to choose from, and some fruit to keep the nutrition up.

At 8:45, we left for Monte Coca with music on the bus. Today, we started our CAP project, which has two sections: pouring concrete for the floor of a house and building up the walls of a house nearby. Before we started with our work, we presented our plan of action to Don Roberto, the community leader who has helped us with this project. We split into two groups to tackle the first day of the project, with one group starting by getting rid of some old flooring with hammers and a pickaxe (Tyler has told us that this is very therapeutic and that they will be sleeping well tonight), moving bricks for ease of access to them, and getting mortar ready for the bricklaying. Group two started on the cementing of the floor by mixing cement and sand and pouring water on it to create a mixture that is useable for the floor. They put the mixture into buckets to pass in a line, and placed it down in the house, using a wooden board to level it.

For lunch, we stayed at Monte Coca instead of bussing back to El Rancho like we normally would. Lunch was catered to us there, which was white rice, egg and potato salad, chicken, beans, and fruit consisting of watermelon; pineapple; and cantaloupe. We had freshly squeezed lemonade (yum!) accompanying the meal. After we ate, we took some time to rest and get ready for the afternoon of work, mainly by hyping each other up with a series of Bruno Mars songs sung by the group, with almost everyone joining in.

After our lunch activities, the two groups swapped activities, with the first group working on the floor cement, and the second group working on the house. The first group continued where the second left off: pouring the cement onto the floor. They had to make a second batch to continue, but that was cut short by an incoming cloud of rain. The second group continued where the first group left off: moving bricks and getting mortar ready to pour. They continued the work by bricklaying and mortaring the walls, with the help (and hindrance) of some local kids and a very friendly dog named Rocky (although Xoie insists that his name is Ray-ray). They were cut short by the rain and headed back to the bus to head back to El Rancho.

After all that work, we were all quite tired, so it’s a good thing that we had an hour of quiet time to rest and recuperate, along with showering off all of the dust and cement mud that we were caked in. It was a bit annoying to shower for some groups, as the electricity went out around when we came back.

After that time to cool down and get some rest, we got together to write some postcards to some Global Glimpse sponsors who
made this trip possible for us (thank you!).
With the cards done, we had some more time to spend before dinner, so a quick (but competitive) few rounds of Mafia were played.

For dinner, we had some delicious tacos, with choices of beef or chicken to choose from, with multiple sides to pick from.

We are excited about CAP Day 2 and the leadership that we will get from Tyler and Ella.
Bye for now,
-Demarcus and Wythe