Santa Maria de Jesus: A family

This is one of the families that received concrete flooring from our Houses to Home project on Tuesday. They are standing in what is the patio but it essential serves multiple purposes, including: laundry area, bathroom, shower, and kitchen. The mother was a widow with 12 remaining children (there were 15 but 3 had passed away). Of the remaining 12, 4 were married and lived elsewhere...so doing the math, 9 people lived in the home. You'll note that the women and daughters wore typical Mayan clothing, whereas many of the young boys had more modern clothing, such as Gap.



An interesting thing happened as we were nearing the end of our project - many of the women and children came over to inspect the finished product. It was novel and thus, a very big deal.


And one last picture - this is Hector, the youngest child. He, of his own volition, wanted to be involved with the cement process. So he took it upon himself to move the empty buckets back to the start of the line to be refilled with the cement. As the day progressed, his fatigue became evident, but he persisted, and even muscled two buckets at a time several times.