Mediagua

Wishing everyone a happy (almost) Thanksgiving!! We will be celebrating here tomorrow with members of the Congregation, Notre Dame community and other people from the U.S. who are working in Holy Cross schools/missions in Santiago.  We are going to celebrate Mass in English, which will be interesting because many of us don't really know the new Mass parts yet, not having celebrated Mass in English in quite some time . . .

Our fundraising campaign to donate a "mediagua" house to a family in need in Santiago finally ended after several months of collecting and counting coins from each class every day.  Together, students, parents, professors, and other school employees raised a little over $2,000 to purchase a mediagua, which is a two-room, pre-fabricated house constructed of wood panels.  They are typically used to provide emergency housing solutions after natural disasters or to give an inexpensive house to homeless people and are really meant to be temporary solutions.  However, they often become permanent homes due to cycles of poverty, lack of jobs, etc.  We donated the house to a family that lives about 15 minutes from the school.  They are a couple in their early 40s with 9 children, the oldest is about 18 years old and the youngest is 4.  They were living in a very small, two-room house that was on the point of falling apart due to termite infestation.  All of the kids slept on two bunks beds in a tiny little room.  In the Mom and Dad's room there was a bed, and a giant television almost too big to fit in the room...the family was very proud to have it.  My initial reaction was to want to scream at them, "why do you have this ginormous television when your kids don't have enough to eat and you can't pay your bills???"  But then I reminded myself to try to listen deeply first without judging, perhaps with a bit more compassion and an open heart to place myself in this family's story of cyclical lack of education and the pressure of trying to raise 9 kids.  The parents told me that they have tried several times to go to the local government and have still not received any kind of help. 
The campus ministry team brought along about 10 high schoolers to help construct the home over a 2-day period.  I let the high school boys worry about most of the heavy lifting and instead played with 4 of the little girls who stayed home to watch the construction ;)
Once again, I was humbled and heartbroken by these lives, these hidden realities of resilience and suffering, that border my own and which call me to renew constantly my vocation to work in some small way for a more just and compassionate society.  The girls were stick thin, timid at first and then carefree and starving for affection.  The first day, I brought along some sidewalk chalk just in case the kids were going to be home.  They had never played with chalk before, and we used up all of the 8 sticks the very first day creating a chalk village outside of the house, complete with a pizza restaurant, a school, a church, and a police station. 

 

 

The rest of the day, I tried to keep inventing things to do...decorating plastic soda bottles, outdoor races, hair-brading, spin the bottle dare challenges, hopscotch, and hangman to try to teach all of them (including the 3rd and 2nd grader) the alphabet and how to put together words in order to read....how thankful I am to have grown up surrounded by a bunch of creative cousins who were always playing outside!!

After seeing the situation of the family, we organized a last-minute food drive in the school in order to get the family enough rice, sugar, milk, spaghetti, oil, etc. to last for awhile.  Also, shout-out to MJ and Nicole Lehman for the NickyNicole donations they sent awhile back...we have been able to use the donations for different events the entire year and gave some to the girls as well...they were so excited and thankful!

 

 

Here are some more pictures from the construction...