How to Install a Cement Floor

First, call your local cement contractor and s/he will arrive with a big cement mixing truck. A crew will come out and pour the cement, you hand them your credit card and voila!

OR … in a small Central American village, the old-fashioned way. Project Ix-Canann has put in 200+ cement floors in the homes of villagers in the El Remate community, with priority going to those with young children in order to reduce exposure to bacteria and parasites that cause illness. The family is responsible for clearing out the space of furniture and leveling the dirt floor as best they can, then the supplies and crew (us) come in. 

Our work was at a very rustic building with two rooms, one of which is used for the living area for a young mother and her five-year-old son, and the other a small store.

There is also an outhouse. 

Our Guatemalan "strong men," in the most respectful sense of the term, were Edgar and his son Enrique.  Let’s just say that as hard as we were working, they outpaced us 20 to one!

Jim and Zeth shoveling sand into a big mound.

Edgar heaving enormously heavy bags of cement onto the sand.

Taking turns mixing the sand and cement.

As if each shovel blade wasn’t already heavy enough, then came the rocks.

Buckets of water were added to the mix, so we took turns shoveling sand, water, rocks and cement into a giant slurry.

Edgar carried probably 100 buckets of this heavy slurry to the floor, and we spread the mix with a trowel.

Unaccustomed to the heat or this type of work, we had to rest frequently throughout the day but Edgar and Enrique took only a short break for lunch. The rest periods gave Zeth time to interact with the young boy and a couple of puppies. He’s great with kids and animals, and his little bit of high school Spanish is coming in helpful!

Grateful to be here in Guatemala, lovely people.(Also grateful that next up will be far less demanding English teaching ;-)

Day One: Lake Peten Itza, El Remate, Guatemala

Day One: Lake Peten Itza, El Remate, Guatemala

Moments like yesterday are why I’m a travel junkie. The guys still asleep, I took an early walk along a small road where we’re staying.  What a treat! No city noise, only the idyllic sounds of nature: tropical birds unlike we hear at home … the occasional cry of a monkey, perhaps chiding her youngster … insects buzzing … and the crunch of my footsteps along the gravel-dirt road.

After a while a small older man walked in my direction, and I offered my best “Buenos dias, senor.”  He offered me a mostly toothless smile and gently reached out toward me – but not his right hand, as if to shake hands, his left hand. He held onto my hand and we had this wonderful nodding and eye-to-eye exchange while he said something I couldn’t understand. Had he been an American in the U.S., I would have likely averted my eyes and pulled back thinking, “Why is he still holding onto my hand?” But he just continued to smile with old soul eyes and, as we parted, he blew me a kiss! For me travel is less about the big Eiffel Tower/Pyramids/Vatican imagery, and more these small, magical moments when we have real human contact with people we would otherwise never encounter. Blissful!

Day One was mostly orientation and a few hours of R&R. Globe Aware's local organization is Project Ix-Canaan, founded by Canadian Anne Lossing who came to Guatemala 20+ years ago toward the end of Guatemala’s long civil war. She wanted to empower the local Mayan community to protect their own rain forests, and identified the community first needed health, education and opportunity.

  

Over the years she and her Guatemalan husband, a doctor, have established a medical clinic and a dental clinic (at left) which is staffed largely by visiting clinicians from the U.S. and other places. (No patients on the weekend, so it was empty.) 

They also have established an after-school youth development center and a women’s center, each of which we toured today.

We also visited a school where we’ll be teaching later in the week, and Anne pointed out shards of pottery on the ground – at least hundreds but easily 1,000 or more years old – that can be found in several places in this region called Peten. The Mayans believed that vessels had a kind of spirit and they would break most of their pots during sacrifices or in burials, and also every 40 years to start a new beginning.  

Lunch was at the women’s center where we tried our hand at making tortillas. 

What we didn’t eat, we fed to these impossibly skinny dogs on site.

Back at Lake Peten Itza where our small hotel is located, the boys went swimming while I hiked in the nearby nature preserve -- again, surrounded by nothing but trees, birdsong, monkeys overhead ... 

... and big toads, this guy easily twice the size of my fist! 

It was hard hiking in the heat, but the view at the top was worth it! 

Off to breakfast and then for our first project, pouring cement flooring in a local villager's home.