The house in this picture was the furthest along of any of them, and even by the end of the week it was not yet ready for a roof. There was maybe one more house to the right of those shown here that had some block work down, and maybe a couple more with foundations poured.
A year later the 18 original houses were essentially complete but still unoccupied. That year the Greensboro team worked on digging the water lines to each house, while the Durham team of which I was a part constructed the sewer lines. By the end of our stay, the main street looked like a network of trenches from WWI. It was still a bit like a ghost town.There were maybe 20 or so of us on that team, a handful of masons, a backhoe operator (my man Walter Machado) and an ever-changing handful of homeowners.
This year the change from the prior year was dramatic. All of the original 18 houses were occupied and the streets were filled with people -- especially kids. Homeowners had made extensive improvments, including workshops, walls, clotheslines and gardens. Homes were
decorated, painted, furnished. The place was alive. Indeed those humble structures had been transformed from casa (house) to hogar (home).The finished house shown here is the same one in the very first picture above from 2007.
On the construction site to the back of the original 18 houses, at least a dozen are under construction. The place is aswarm with activity. Where before there were maybe 10 Honduran laborers to our 20 or so team members, now there are at least as many Hondurans as team members. And since, on average, the Hondurans probably do about twice as much work in a day, the amount of progress is visible from one day to the next. There is a feeling of tremendous energy and enthusiasm about the place. We can all see now very clearly where this is going and how these good people are going to benefit. This is a good place. It is now a real neighborhood.
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