Team #2 Costa Rica | "The Walls Are Up!" Day 5

The following posts were contributed by Global Village trip participants.

A day of celebration for all of us. After three days and counting of hard work digging deep trenches and holes, inserting the posts for the framework of the house, we installed the heavy concrete panels between the posts to form the walls. At least we could now see the fruits of our labor for the lucky families in the community that will qualify to live there.

During lunch, we had the pleasure of a presentation by one of the community members of the small town of Sabaloand and viewed the artwork of some of the 25 elementary school students in the area. There are 38 families in the surrounding communities, and only a population of approximately 3,000 people in the large, remote district of Biolley.

After another hard day of work, we gathered to celebrate, along with community members, the birthday of Jillian Hausman, one of our team members.  They prepared a custard-like cake for her as we sang “Happy Birthday” in both languages.

Tonight was an early dinner at 6pm, and then off to sing karaoke and dance for some entertainment. A good time was had by all, highlighted by Diana’s beautiful voice.

My impressions of Costa Rica and its people have not changed much since I started traveling here on an annual basis in 1993.  My family spent nine months here in 1999-2000 to experience a different culture and school.  The country remains very beautiful, and the people are open, friendly, happy (always with a smile) and kind – always maintaining that “pura vida” attitude.

On a personal level, when I signed up for this trip along with 17-year-old Tarek Ezzelarab, a foreign exchange student from Egypt staying with our family, I was both excited and a bit nervous. I was excited to take Tarek to a beautiful country with warm weather for spring break, allow him to accumulate service hours for his school, meet a wide spectrum of people, and to understand the concept of volunteerism in the U.S., which in my opinion is one of the greatest attributes of our country. I am always excited to travel to Costa Rica and, in a small way, make a difference in a community.

On the flip side, I was a bit nervous about who the other team members would be, the Spartan accommodations I was led to believe we would experience, and how I would be able to perform on site given my previous back and health issues.  First of all, the people on this trip are amazing! After all, what type of people would pay several thousand dollars to do grunt work for a week? Also, I ended up knowing a member of our group, Pete Kessler, who is as nice of a guy as you can meet. He did spectacular work on my home 25 years ago!  I have found the members of our group warm, highly intelligent, generous people who have treated me and Tarek very well. Our American and Costa Rican leaders (Noah, Haley, Luis, Woody, and Diana) are awesome. I came in with very low expectations on the accommodations, based on the descriptions before the trip, and other similar trips I have experienced, but I was pleasantly surprised – clean rooms, good food. I dislike cold showers, but I came prepared with a solar shower which worked well.

Lastly, my performance on-site issue is really a non-issue. The team members come in with abilities at all levels, and my goals were to pace myself, stay healthy, not get injured, and just do the best I could. I feel this has been achieved so far.

I will miss staring out the window of the bus each morning on the way to the work site, observing the beautiful vistas trudging along at 5 mph with music blasting. I will also miss the competitive Hearts games at night.  I still can’t get over Misha defeating 3 experienced Hearts players the very first time she played the game!

Thank you God and Habitat for Humanity for allowing me and Tarek to experience this trip and to help build homes, communities, and hope!

Pura vida,

Ford Nicholson

Costa Rica trip with Habitat was sounds really interesting to me. Until I go to the dinner with the people who going in this trip and find out that all of them is older than me and what I start thinking about if I still should go and spend my spring break on this trip or no. After a while of thinking I decided to come to this trip. I am from Egypt 17 years old and it was really interesting to visit Central America. This part of the world that I never plan to visit before and it wasn’t in my list.

Start packing for the trip and every day I know a big new surprise from my host father like we will wakeup every day at 7:30 am. And I’m not a morning person. There is no hot water to shower. I decided to stop thinking about any thing and just get ready and pack for this trip.

Today we are on our 4th day here. I love it I don’t want to go back. I love this people who respect each other they don’t treat me like a kid , all of them talking to me in a really interesting conversations I would love to say now I have a new friends a really cool new friends.  They are older than me but they are the best :). I love and respect every single person in this trip because they give from their money and time just to help another poor people in another country.

Today we wake up at 7:30 am. We have short day we go where we work today we can see the house that we working on it for 3 days. We put the walls on it was amazing. When you see this land that have nothing and you see the walls up. Today we changed the team. I got to work with Ken who is like a machine he is not a normal human being this guy finish work that we try to finish in two days. I like the spirit in the working place and how the people help each other. And how is the team leaders take care from all of the people. We have a presentation about organization from the people who leave here and how they change to producers and who they rich some of their goals and still have some. They are looking for to rich them in the next few years.

I enjoy spending time with this people and I really wish all of the people will be like this people who works with Habitat this is the real meaning of the world peace I looking for to find Habitat in Egypt and I will wait for all of them to come visit and help me to build some houses in Egypt.
The last thing that I want to talk about is the wild Hearts game every night after dinner I really enjoying this game especially when you play with a person who likes Steve. He is the man. And today I looking for the karaoke it will be so much fun.

TareQ Ezz El-Arab