Habitat Global Adventure

a newsletter from the global village

department of habitat for humanity international July 2001 vol. 8 no. 2

Hunn, a former Peace Corps volunteer in India, offers us a look at his GV team and short-term mission. Some of this material has been submitted for magazine publication and to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Even if a visitor were not current on events in Sri Lanka, the teardrop-shaped island of 18.5 million people off India’s southern coast, passing 22 bunkered, roadside army posts enroute from the airport to downtown Colombo would make you figure that warfare dominates island life.

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hey drove through Higgorakuda, the streets buzzing with people, cars and carts. They viewed acres of lush greenery rice fields, passed over the temporary one-lane steel bridge, which waited for the larger, adjacent rusting steel-and-concrete bridge to resume construction, and looked down on the river’s most prominent flat rock where locals scrubbed clothes.

They followed the man-made canals flowing from the smartly engineered tank. From their first drive along the canals, the myriad of bathers, clothes washers, water gatherers and swimmers seemed to turn and acknowledge their coming. A little bridge took them over the canal and into the jungle where simple houses were sparsely spaced. Lining and crossing the miles of dirt road was a perfectly shaped 18” x 8” hand-excavated trench.

During their three-week, sweat-drenched vacation, white PVC pipe would be dropped into these hand-carved trenches to carry the villagers’ first potable water.

That first day, they got out of the vans and stepped onto a dirt path lined with villagers and scared children. Timidly, music and singing started. With coaxing the singing grew louder. Soon a boy, well below the 6-footer’s waist, looking fearful, stood before him. As the boy went to his knees, the American dropped to his also and held the boy’s little hands to steady him. The boy was trying to kiss his feet, and the surprised yank’s eyes watered beyond the level of respect the kiss was to signify.

Pretty little girls danced gently and languidly and sang softly as the children guided the 11 Americans to a ceremony at the site where one of two Habitat homes would be built in Polannanruwa, Sri Lanka.

After the first few days of work, the children were no longer intimidated. They mimicked the work that the villagers and Americans did. Once again they proved children could do as well as adults; they just couldn’t reach as high. They shyly plied for attention, as the ever-polite Sri Lankans watched to prevent the children from becoming pests, though they were too beautiful for that.

“Wasn’t 16 red bricks in that barrow your tops yesterday?” Dave, the ex-college. halfback, asked of Greg (Dwayne, to correct editing), the 6-foot, 200-pound, ex-college pulling guard.

“Yeah,” he said, as they stopped their sweaty work to watch the tall, bony, shoeless lady push the dilapidated wheelbarrow filled with 20 bricks from the brick-making area 30 yards away, around trees and over the path with stones and loose sand.

“Isn’t that the lady we saw working yesterday?”

“Yes.. .She’s something.

Who is she?”

“Chandra Latha is her name,” Habitat organizer Rohita told us before he took us to her home.

“It is understood that if a Habitat house is built for you, you help others when they build one if you can. Chandra is a very helping person.”

Chandra’s red brick, 9 x 20 house, like the two we built, had two doors, one window and Is one-half of a potentially double in size A-frame (if the owners are able to cover another $350 to $400 In costs),

Although Chandra couldn’t speak English and was very care-worn, she radiated excitement as she showed us her home. The best corner of her house was for her ten-year old, Her son, unable to brush the flies away as he lay on his blanket, had been a lifelong victim of, perhaps, polio.

Every day when you drove by the waving kids, through the thick jungle, past hand-dug trenches, busy canal, rice fields, rusting bridge, you had someone like Chandra to remember.

What will you remember from your first Habitat home building trip?

Flashing pictures in the head…

Marveling at the young man climbing the tall coconut trees using an ankle-wrapped rag for climbing support.

Watching Ravi respond to “the girls need a paint brush to stain the window sills.” He created one by cracking a coconut shell, chopping, smashing and fibering one end till it became a coconut-handled paint brush.

Showing the athletic Charmina with his cricket bat In hand what facing an American pitcher might be like, and then when retrieving his foul ball from the jungle, forgetting Satchel’s Paige’s warning to “never look back,” Always look forward, so you can tell where the pitcher’s mound ends and the latrine begins; I tumbled into the palm-frond covered 9x4x4pit.

Observing the fish salesman chopping off a fish head with his well-used knife on a worn piece of wood, while sitting on top of the rear fender of his bike.

Most of all I will try to remember, especially when my character needs improvement, the spirit of those people—from Habitat homeowners, helping neighbors, to boss grandma, the mason and workers. I will try to remember the smiles that seldom faded and seemed to grow as the red brick walls went up.

I’ll smile remembering the kids. From their early defeat of shyness to their playful happiness that seamed to zoom incrementally each time we played hokey-pokey or London Bridge. May they always be so wonderful, so cute, so lovable, May these children never go to war. May cheering their own Karate Kid (Ravi) be the closest they come to tasting the bitter toil of fighting.

A joyful Sri Lanka Habitat homeowner family beams with pride of accomplishment, as they partner with GV team members to build their new home.