A roof for my country - Un Techo Para Mi Pais

Un Techo Para mi Pais (short: UTPMP) is an organisation founded 2001 in Chile. But that project actually started 1997 in Chile with the name: Un Techo Para Chile.

The aim is to build emergency accomodations for poor families and in trouble areas. The houses are paid of donations and they are build by mostly students on weekend trips.

start working (pic by David Plocosh)

The weekend 4th, 5th and 6th of February I participated in one weekend construction. I drove to the capital of Guatemala and met there all of the other volunteers at the Teatro Nacional. Our destination was Chilasco in Bajo Verapaz (which is there: Google maps) and we arrived on friday night at about 11pm. First we put our stuff into the school where we slept and also took out all the tools of the busses. All the people were divided into several groups with maybe 60-70 people. We made some group games and had our shared dinner together, everybody was asked to bring some food for this. I found it actually really interesting that so many people brought cookies and chips for our shared dinner. Healthy food was rare. A very tired Ina went to bed finally at 1am, after one day mainly sitting in busses.

we have the walls, juppie

On Saturday they woke us up at 5am, but nobody really wanted to leave the sleeping bag, it was freezing cold outside. After breakfast I met my group to build our house. We were 7 people: Sergio, our leader, David from El Salvador, Anna-Maria, Luis, Diego and Yilma, all students from Guatemala City. We made again some games to know our group better and warm up. At 8am we started our walk to the family we built the house for. Unfortunately, the man of the house was very sick and I haven´t met him (UTPMP organized him a transport to the hospital while we were workig, but he is better now and home again), but the woman was very nice and the kids helped us building the house.

and go on with the windows and the door

 The houses are made of wood, and it´s a lot of work to finish the house in 2 days. I thought this will be faster, but we made it finally. The Saturday was very cold, no sun and sometimes rain durig the day. We worked until the darkness, maybe until 7:30pm. The family cooked our second breakfast and lunch and we ate together with them. But I couldn´t figure out actually how may children they had, because there were also neighbour kids around and helping.

some roof-preparation

 The second night was so much colder then the first and many other volunteers told me, that they couldn´t sleep at all. I was lucky, I could sleep. We woke up at 5am again and started working at 8am. We had some help of our big group leaders, and so we built the floor and walls very fast, the roof took us a while. We finished at 4pm and made a little opening party. The little visitors really enjoyed the balloons, we made pictures, some firework and went to school with our family. In the school all groups came together with their families to say goodbye. Finally we built 50 new houses in Chilasco, and another group went to Santa Rosa and built there 14 houses. In the end a successfull, cold, exhausting, happy, sad, eventfully and also full of new experiences weekend for me. We arrived in the capital at 11pm on Sunday and I drove back to Xela on Monday.

some cute children from Chilasco

An awesome experience was also standing around the bonfire on Saturday night after dinner and listen to the experiences, wishes, thoughts, hope and knowledge of the other volunteers. What they told about there UTPMP work, what they wish for Guatemala, what they think about the proverty in their country and how they motivated themselves to go on and fight for a better future for all Guatemalans. I could feel how everbody of them LOVE their country, and that was so amazing, because I never, really never felt that in Germany. They know that Guatemala has a lot of problems, like endless, but they love their country, they are proud to be Guatemalans and they really want to make a step foward. They want and they work for that every person has the chance to has a life without being indigent. That was maybe the best part for me this day or the weekend, listen to what the youth of Guatemala thinks.

house finished: Yilma, me, David, Diego, Luis, before of them Anna-Maria and Sergio