Today, after two wonderful days of acclimating to the Chilean time zone, we finally began to earn our keep. My left thumb is still throbbing. I hit the nail every time, but it wasn’t always the steel one. Most of the team has a sore thumb. The day began with a welcome from local dignitaries including the Mayor of Casablanca. Later, each team met their family and dove into the project.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful these families are. In the span of a few days their dream of owning their own home is becoming a reality. The skeleton of the house was on the slab when we showed up this morning. We were supplied with siding, roofing, insulation and drywall and told to get to work. Work started out slow as we decided on sequence of work and split our team of ten into smaller work groups.

Houses in this neighborhood are very close to one another, so much so that we had to request permission from the neighbor’s house to stand on his roof to put some siding in place. All went well until one of our workers “dropped in” on the neighbors. He fell through the roof and the ceiling and wound up standing on a dresser inside their house. Fortunately neither of us were injured, but that resulted in the immediate firing of myself and another team member from the siding job. And yes… we will work diligently to make sure the neighbor’s roof is repaired, too.

In general, I was amazed at the depth of knowledge among my teammates and humbled by the generosity of our home owners. During our first break in the morning, our home owners asked who would like ice cream. We all said that would be great, and within minutes they had gone to the store and bought 10 or 15 popsicles. Here in Chile that represents a not insignificant outlay, and yet they treated all of us, plus the carpenters and Habitat personnel. It has been a long day of hard work. Today we will go to bed sore and worn out. It has been a long time since I have been so fulfilled!

Brent Bristow
Pilot
Delta employee from Northwest Airlines