A Saturday with Habitat for Humanity

I recently joined the socio-civic organization we have at work and the first event I got to participate in was a Habitat for Humanity activity, held a couple of Saturdays ago. I had never been able to join a Habitat for Humanity activity before, although I've had a couple of opportunities to do so in the past, so I readily made myself available in this activity and even helped out in the planning.
The activity was going to be held in the SNKI (or Samahang Nagkakaisa sa Kamarin, Inc.) site in Kamarin and we were supposed to be there by 730am. which is terribly early for me. In any case, I managed to get to the assembly point by 630am and was actually one of the first few people there. Lots of people were late and some even backed out at the last minute, so we ended up getting to the site at 845am which was a lot later than expected.

Despite that, the rest of the day went very well. Engineer Noel Zeta who was leading the work in the site shared a brief history of Habitat for Humanity with the participants before discussing the SNKI Phase 2 project – which is comprised of 109 houses and is expected to be complete by July 2008. He then explained what we would be doing to help out. Engr. Zeta said that most of the actual house-building would be done by the skilled workers to make sure that the houses were being built with a certain standard and quality (I mean, you can't really expect corporate folks who have no experience in construction to be able to build houses, can you?) so our goal would be to ensure that the workers would be able to do their jobs well.

This essentially included moving hollow blocks from the large stockpile in the middle of the SNKI site to the center of each of the houses being built. By doing this, the workers could easily reach for the hollow blocks and build the walls. We had to move about 60 hollow blocks for about 8 houses which meant we moved approximately 500 hollow blocks that day. Of course, if you had to pick one up and walk several meters to bring it to where it was needed, it would take a really long time to 20 people to move 60 blocks (you may not think it's that difficult but try carrying an actual hollow block and you'll realize just how heavy it is). So instead of doing that, we decided to create a "human conveyor belt" from the stockpile to each of the target houses. This was still quite tiring, and we sometimes had to take breaks in the middle of the hollow block transfer to rest.


Shortly before lunch, a truck filled with sand actually came and dumped its load in the site. The sand would be mixed with cement, and this cement mix would be used for piling the hollow blocks one on top of the other to build the houses. Now the mixer was somewhere between the load of sand and the actual houses so we had to shovel sand into sacks and transfer the sacks to the mixer.
Finally, once the cement mix had been put together, we had to transfer the cement mix to where the houses so the workers could have the mix right in front of them when they start building the walls.

The activity was done at 5pm, and everyone was exhausted (but, well, not completely wiped out, coz we still had to drive home hehehe) but it was great to see that two of the "houses" which started out as ankle high walls at the start of the day were shoulder height when we were done. Before we left, Engineer Zeta introduced Nanay Ludy Magtalas, a board member of SNKI, who thanked us on behalf of the people whose houses they helped build. Pastor Caridad Sanchez then led the us in a thanksgiving prayer.

I got home a little past 8pm, which was actually supposed to be Earth hour where everyone who wanted to participate would turn everything off from 8 to 9pm. I was really dirty by that time, so I ended up being only, er, partially compliant to Earth Hour. Everything in my house was turned off - lights, aircon, TV - except the lights in the bathroom. I took a shower and waited 'til 9pm before turning on any other light or electrical appliance at home. Needless to say, I fell asleep shortly after that. :)

It was a very tiring day, but it was incredibly amazing. Habitat for Humanity never runs out of projects and are always looking for volunteers so if you are interest to help build a house (and burn a whole lot of calories in the process LOL), you may want to visit their website which contains their contact information as well as information on their program and history.