Community development and affordable housing projects (42USC9816)

As I was about to write my third post in a row about cooking, I realized that maybe I should address some of the other activities we do here in Tijuana. But until recently, there wasn't much among our plans that was worth sharing, unless you really want to hear about how I never found a good pumpkin ale in Ohio or how I am probably going blind with all the time I spend grading essays. Now, however, I have proof of us doing something of substance.

As part of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, the consulate organized a community-service project through Fundación Esperanza de México, which helps Tijuana-area families build concrete houses. Incidentally, the Peace Corps has programs in Mexico, but they are focused on preserving ecology and advancing technology. The U.S. assistance is limited because the program was admitted starting only in 2004. Before that, there was some resistance based on justifiable reservations reverberating from colonization.

The Esperanza (meaning Hope) program is unique in that it is not a takeover nor a handout. The families actually pay for their houses (over time, of course), but the foundation coordinates the needed resources, including, us, the manual labor. The families do plenty of the heavy lifting, too. The foundation provides the machine for the families and their community to create the concrete blocks for the walls of their houses. And trust me, the family and community had done a lot of their share already. The first part of the morning was spent stacking the blocks so we could make space to really dig in.

What we were digging into was the shallow foundation of the previous home, a wooden structure that provided little insulation or protection and that had already been easily demolished. The foundation was surrounded by tires to shore up the dirt of the surrounding hills and the roots of the encroaching vegetation. We formed a bucket line with students from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Tijuana and volunteers from a health-care organization near Los Angeles to clear the chunks of destroyed foundation, the remains of removed tires, and the tons of cleared dirt. TJ fell in toward the beginning of the line, after spending some time in the pit with a pick.

I was more toward the quality-control area, where we decided whether the contents of bucket would be dumped on the trash pile or passed on to the end of the line, where the dirt was being spread like a blanket to hold the evermore blocks that were popping out of the machine down the hill. At the end of the day, it didn't seem like we had accomplished much more than creating an enormous hole, but my arms knew better, and they elected to give myself a beer for a job well done. Apparently, they were right, because two days later, when I went to get my flu shot, the nurse commented on my muscular upper arms. See the karma that charity can bring?