Back from Bataan

Hello all! I have been on an adventure to say the least! I am back from Bataan (I have actually been back since yesterday) and yes, it is a little earlier then I expected. I will start with the beginning of my adventure. So, as I said before, the other volunteers and I decided to do Techos Para Mi Pais, which is an organization that builds temporary relief houses and then later goes back and builds permanent housing after helping the family members get jobs and become more financially stable. The organization is run in 13 different countries and, as a precursor to my story, I want to say that I have a lot of respect for what this organization does. That being said, it just was not our week!

The week started with us having to meet all the others going on the trip at Parque Nacional in San Jose on Monday. We all stayed in a hostel on Sunday night because we had to be at the park by 12. After meeting up with our director, we sat in a big ampitheater like thing and listened to Bob Marley and talked. We ended up leaving the park close to four. Talk about living on Tico time! We boarded the buses only to find out that there were not enough seats for everyone. I ended up being one of the lucky few who got to stand for the three hour bus ride to Bataan. It actually was not as bad as it sounds and I did have a few very kind young people (all the other volunteers, besides those from WorldTeach, were in the late teens or very early 20s) offer to trade with me.

When we arrived in Bataan, it was pouring rain and freezing! We pulled up to a school and were told that this would be our home for the next 5 days. They opened the classrooms up and we moved the desks and chairs to the back to make room for our sleeping bags. It was raining so hard at this point, it was difficult to hear the scraping of the metal desks against the concrete floors that would become our beds. After unpacking and getting situated, we had dinner. Dinner was served around 11. By this time, we were all exhausted and headed to our "beds". It rained throughout the entire night. Sometimes it was so loud, it would wake you up. Then again, I may have been woken up by the feeling of my hip bones digging into the cement. It´s a toss-up.

The next morning we were woken up at 5. We had breakfast, dressed in our shorts, t-shirts and tennis shoes and headed out to our work sites. Myself and another man in my group were assigned to carry a huge, wooden pole that probably weighed close to 75 pounds, on our shoulders. About three minutes into the walk, it started to rain like I have never seen rain before. It was raining so hard, it was hard to carry on a conversation with the person next to you. So here I am, walking in the pouring rain carrying a huge pole on my shoulders and slipping evrey once in a while in mud. During our walk, we continue to drop off groups of people at their work sites. My site is the last one. After walking for 25 minutes, we finally arrived to the place where we would be building. The last 300 meters or so was through a swamp. Once we got to our site, we met our family. My famliy consisted of a mom, dad and their four children. The mother was pregnant as well. After meeting the family, we got to work. I was put in charge of sawing the poles in half. This was definitely a job seeing that each pole was about 20 inches in diameter, it was pouring rain (which makes for very wet wood) and the others working with me had no experience with using a good ol fashioned hand saw. I sawed until right before lunch time. At this point, I had started to get hives. Luckily, one of the men working with me was an English professor here in Costa Rica and so he was bilingual. I had him explain to my group leader what was going on. She ended up calling for a truck to pick me up. About a half hour later, the truck arrives to pick up a very hivey Lizzie. The truck then had to make a couple of stops before he took me back to the school. Once back at the school, the person in charge there could not find the keys for me to get into my room. In all, from the time my group leader called the truck to the time I was let into the room to change, close to 2 hours had passed. I was itchy and red!

It continued to rain the rest of the day and the entire night. The next morning I spoke to the girl (she was only 18) in charge and told her that I would not be going out to work that day. I had to explain to her that it took way too long for me to be able to get warm and that it was extremely dangerous for me to get cold. I am not sure she really believed or understood what I was saying, but I did end up staying at the school the second day. Here, I cleaned the kitchen while the others sat, smoked, and watched me clean. After that, I had to clean the bathrooms (think cleaning portapotties...very similar). I then helped brainstorm things for the activity that night. It was an extremely uncomfortable, gross and boring day. By the end of the day when my fellow volunteers returned, I was very unhappy. The nice thing was, they were unhappy as well. Apparently they had spent the majority of the day just standing out in the rain waiting for the truck to come with the supplies they needed. The truck never came and some people literally stood in the rain for 4 hours waiting.

I decided that if it was still raining the next morning, I was going to head back to San Jose. There was no point in me staying in Bataan. I was not building houses and I did not feel like I had a real purpose there. A few of the other volunteers felt the same way and so we decided to get the 9 oclock bus out of Bataan the next morning. Funny thing is, when we went to get the bus, we were told they were not running due to the rain and flooding. We had to go back at noon. Luckily, we were able to get on and return to San Jose.

So in conclusion, this week is not what I had hoped for at all. There were times I was in tears and there were times my friends were in tears. If nothing else, it made me appreciate warm, dry Arizona, Amor (the organization I build with in Mexico) and how organized they are, and my fellow volunteers. It was an experience I will laugh about in a few months I am sure and it is something that has made me closer with those I will be spending the next year with.