While I've been here, I've really wanted to do some earthquake relief volunteer work. There really isn't that much going on in Santiago since the earthquake did not affect that many people's houses here. However, in southern Chile many people lost their homes after the earthquake. I found this organization called Casa Básica which organizes volunteer house building trips during the long weekends. I thought it would just be a group of random Chileans that wanted to go to build. However, I was really surprised to find when I arrived that it was a group of about 20 Chilean high school seniors (5 girls and 15 guys) that all knew each other from school. There were 3 other college students that were running the trip and Theresa, another student on my program.We were told to meet at a school at 6pm where the bus would take us to Pumanque. Pumanque is a town about 3 hours south of Santiago. It should really take less time but the drive was pretty slow since most of it was on normal roads since it is a very rural town of only about 3,000 people. In the chilean style, the bus left at 8pm and we stopped at a gas station with a food court for almost an hour.
We arrived in Pumanque at about midnight and we stayed in a school that has lots of bunk beds and the people that work there cooked all of our food. The organization is Christian, and therefore at the beginning they were very explicit about the rules: no alcohol and girls and guys sleep in different rooms. It was pretty funny that everyone shared one bathroom because I'm used to co-ed bathrooms at LC but everyone else thought it was the biggest deal. I told them what it is like at LC and they really could not believe me. It was funny to hang out with high school students that wanted to go to bed really late so that they could stay up to talk. They had a lot of questions about my life in the US and it was fun to get to know each of them even if they made fun of my inability to say certain things in Spanish. Every mornin
g, the blasted this reggeton song at 7am to wake us up and then would blast it in the evening and just start to dance. I heard it so many times that weekend that I know most of the words now! It really is quite good- here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zp1TbLFPp8
Theresa and I were placed in the same group with 6 high school guys. Our site was literally in the middle of nowhere. It was 15 minute drive from the town but the entire
ride was through pastures with hundreds of sheep. As the truck drove over the hills, the sheep fled from us.
The house we were building was for a family of six: mother, father, two kids (27 year old son and 11 year old daughter), and the parents of the father. Their land had absolutely beautiful views and was covered with sheep, chickens, turkeys, goats, dogs, cats, and birds. It was amazing to see how they all live peacefully togethe
r and especially cute to see these mother birds with tons of little chicks following them. The mother has domesticated one of their sheep and she even let me feed it with a bottle! They live in a media-agua which is wooden one-roomed house that people built around Chile right after the earthquake so that they could have a roof over them. They do not have any electricity or running water.
There were 3 worksites with about 8 people at each one. The houses that we built were pre-fabricated so it was quite a different experience than working with Habitat for Humanity. On the first day we leveled the ground and placed the cement blocks of the foundation in holes in the ground. I was quite confused because the cement blocks are really called apoyos (supports) but they all called them pollos for short so I thought they were talking about the chickens that were wandering around! The second day we finished the foundation and assembled the floor. On the third day, we we raised the walls and attached the roof.
For me it was really a challenge to work with the boys and not have someone that is fully in charge. They had all done this type of building project before so they knew what they were doing but did not want to think about giving Theresa and I certain jobs or how we could
all work together. I think that they were not very patient with explaining what things meant when the language made it difficult for us to understand, but I mostly think they treated us differently for being women. It is definitely a part of the culture difference because none of them thought that we could be doing exactly what they did. It was frustrating ask what to do every few minutes, so I eventually gave up because I could tell that Danisa, the 11 year old daughter, looked bored. Living so far from the town makes it really hard for her to see her friends outside of school. I could not believe when she told me that she rides her bike for an hour to get to school. We talked a lot and I made up games that we could play with rocks.
Theresa and I then helped her with her English homework. The next day I brought my Bananagrams board game so that we could play it together when there was nothing for us to do. She loved it so much that we played for the next two days and I let her keep it when it was time to leave. I also talked a lot with the mom and the grandmother. I was intregued about their live but they were even more ingtregued about mine. They are both illiterate and do not know much about the outside world. They wanted to hear me pronounce words and asked me lots of questions about what it is like to fly in an airplane and live in the United States. They made us delicious lunches every day and wanted to serve us each multiple plates!
After the second night, I told the boys in my group how I really felt. They were all extremely shocked at how up fron
t I was with them and said that they had no idea that we wanted to do so much. The third day was so much better because they gave us specific jobs and Danisa helped us to do them too. When the
house was finished and it was time to go, the mother gave me eggs from her chicken to take back to Santiago (and 4 of the 5 made it without breaking)! It was extremely hard to say good
bye to Danisa after bonding so much and knowing that there is really no way to stay in contact because they don't have computers or even mail. I'm going to try to send a letter to her school just in case it can get to her there.
ocus of the trip was to learn about indigenous culture since the majority of indigenous people in Chile live in that area. On our first full day, we went to Feria Pinto which is an outdoor market that sells fruits, vegetables, giant cheeses, meat, seafood, spices, etc. As a group of 40 extranjeros, we definitely stood out there because Temuco is not a tourist destination. We spent the majority of the day at escuela Bicultural Mapuche San Juan De Makewe. Our day at the school was a combination of all my favorite things. We spent the day playing with the children that go to the school and painting the different buildings. We sang so
ngs, played soccer, painted with them, and taught them how to play capture-the-flag. The students were so 
excited to have us there to play with them that they convinced their teachers to let them not have some of their classes. They all called us tía/tío which is basically a form of respect toward people older than them. I thought it is actually quite a good system since it would be impossible to remember all of our names.
which freaked us out. She's also Jewish and has a daughter who studies Sociology who she wants me to meet. It took us about 3 hours to hike up, an hour for a lunch break, and then about two hours to get down. All the Chileans laughed at us for bringing entire raw vegetables and peanut butter sandwiches in our lunches, but then they admitted that it was probably a good idea.
