A Roof to Learn Under

There has been a huge amount of progress on San Miguel over the last couple of days, and more still that has happened outside of it.

On Saturday, we worked for half of the day, there were a few jobs that were needed completion before the weekend really set in. In particular, we were able to take down the old fence and moved another mountain worth of dirt to level out more of the new school foundation. The building techniques here are certainly different from Canadian standards, but that's not to say that they're incorrect. We've learned quite a lot of good pointers for building, repairing and generally for community involvement.

After the half day at work, we had a half day at play as well. We all had the opportunity to go to a Scout meeting in Fernando de la Mora. What we found was just astonishing. The Scout Group, named after General Gemes has around 90 members. They range from Cubs right up to Rovers (although there is no formal Crew as all the Rovers are also Leaders). They count off at the beginning and end of the meetings and by the time it was time to leave, including 18 Canadians, there were 100 people present. Amazing! And they all meet in the same location. This meeting was mostly dedicated to playing games and enjoying the international cooperation that has come from this project. What a great day indeed.

Sunday was a day off for everyone. While most of the Paraguayans working on the site spent the day with their families, in lieu of that, all of us spent the day exploring and learning more about the culture and society of Paraguay. Our first activity was a train journey on the oldest wood powered steam train in the world. It was built in 1911 and is still operational, although at about 10km/h, the 20km trip from Asuncion to Aregua took two hours, but was certainly worth it. Throughout the journey there and back, actors portraying period characters came through the car. All the way through the journey as well, as we passed by houses and communities, people came out of their houses to wave to this train, in all its novelty. The train only runs once every couple of weeks, so we were lucky to have this opportunity.

Once in Aregua, we got to go for a walk around the city. Aregua seems to be the pottery capital of Paraguay and so we were able to see a lot of where and how it was made, as well as several opportunities to purchase some of the pieces. We walked down to the lake, passing by communities and businesses. It's always amazing the differences between communities in Paraguay. The distance between the highest and lowest economic classes at times is a little bit hard to understand. All the same, the spirit of the people who live in the houses, no matter how big or how small, is a lesson to all of us in being being happy, even proud of what we have in life.

Monday, it was back to the worksite. The biggest ocurrence that came from the day was certainly raising the peaks of the roof for the corridor between the old classrooms and the new one. The difference between a building project and a rebuilding project is that, when repairing an existing school, it's sometimes hard to really see what kind of an impact the work is having. It seemed like, for quite some time, our efforts weren't really amounting to anything. Although we were never deterred from work, we were starting to feel like we weren't really getting very much accomplished. With the roof peaks going up, finally, we could see what we were working towards. The new classroom had all of the walls up and that roof was also getting started. The washrooms were being tiled and all the existing classrooms were ready for painting. In one day, we seem to have finally made that important step that took us from getting into the project to working towards the end of it. Just at the right time, too. Monday was our halfway point.

Tuesday and today were similar stories. We keep taking those big steps towards completion. All those fundraisers, all the planning, scrambling and worrying have turned into something very real, into something that is finally taking on a tangible shape. It seems funny already that all those years planting trees and raising money for Scoutrees could have turned into a school that will be around not only for years, but for hundreds of students, working towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

It's amazing not only how much can go into, but also how many things can come from something as simple as a roof.

Good Scouting