This post was submitted by Ivy Tech student and ASB participant Kevin C.

I know I was going to talk about different things than I am about to, but I thought it would be better to talk of our projects. Our first project was laying a concrete floor for a single mother with two children. They live at the bottom of a hill and there floor washes away when it rains. The home was about ten feet by fifteen feet. We divided it up between two days to let it dry. We had to travel about 70 yards to carry 100 lb bags of concrete, and then we had to load buckets full of sand and stones. To make the final stretch to the house we had to cross a river on boulders which everyone but I ended up in the water. Everyone took their fair share of the labor while taking turns speaking to the family. Upon completion the family was so pleased we were invited to the little girls school play.

Our second project was taking tons of clothes to a nearby Indian village. It all started very organized with the schoolchildren filing in and all of us assisting them in their selection then sending them on their way. After the schoolchildren were done the mothers with no organization piled in and just took what they could without a fight. I was perched by the toys and that was a huge mistake. I caught all of them trying to steal all of the cars and stuffing them in their pockets. Eventually I had no more toys to hand out but the kids continued to hound me, and with my fluent Spanish I got my point across. The kids must have thought I was hoarding the toys.

Today’s project was building a bathroom for a family who had an outhouse. There was already a concrete base so we didn’t start from scratch, although it felt like it. The concrete had to be mixed by hand then shoveled into buckets and carried to the house. All of the brick lying was by hand, and we had to learn fast to ever get it done. It seemed like it was taking forever to even get one row done. It eventually had to make it to 8 bricks high and when completed was such a relief.