Students build home for needy family
Imagine Mexico with no Senor Frogs, or Jet skiing, no museums or ancient ruins and you might come up with the chilly, dusty slums of Juarez.
Far from the extreme luxury of Mexico’s coastal resorts, entire families live in scattered shacks built of industrial pallets.
The drafty, insecure homes have slats of wood, conventionally used to stack produce on in warehouses, for walls and roofs.
Yards are fenced in with mattress springs and giant wooden spools, which usually serve to wrap wire, chord or soft piping, and children play in yards littered with dirt.
This past Christmas, a group of students and faculty from Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary joined forces and left the comforts of family and home to build a house for a needy family in Juarez — a real house, with sturdy walls and a solid roof.
Not only did the students volunteer their holidays, they also give their hard-earned money.
While studying for exams and sweating over essays, they had to save more than $1,000 each to cover the cost of the trip as well as a share of the building materials used in the house.
While the trip was generously subsidized by Mount Royal’s Multi-Faith Chaplaincy and Office of Diversity and Human Rights, it was a large demand to place on busy students.
Patricia Scafe, a first-year Public Relations student originally from Terrace, BC, MacNeil Comez, a first-year Nursing student and Multi-faith Chaplain/General Education Professor Glen Ryland made up a third of the group heading for Juarez.
Their objective was to build a small home for a family that included two little girls, mother, father and the matriarchal grandmother. She would join the students every day on the work site, trying to help out where she could and generally soaking up the company of the students.
Their help of the students couldn’t have been more appreciated in the heart broken, war-torn city of Juarez.
Over the last three years, local families have lost 17,000 loved ones as a battle between Mexican drug cartels has gripped the city in its angry fist, according to the Canadian Press.
Expectations surpassed
“When I first heard about it, I was attracted by how affordable the trip was.
I thought, ‘Oh wow, I can go down to Mexico and see somewhere different for a great price,’ but I didn’t know exactly what it would be like,” recalls Scafe.
Scafe admits she didn’t head out on the journey as happy and passionate about it as she returned.
As the big, white rental van left Calgary’s city limits on the two-and-a-half day road trip, scathe realized she wouldn’t be partying with her friends on New Year’s Eve. She realized she’d be expected to spend a lot of time with children at a local orphanage even though she had very little experience around kids.
“And to be honest, the drive down was a bit quiet and awkward because nobody really knew each other at that point, so I was beginning to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.
“I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. It was a nice surprise,” says Scafe.
“I remember that as we packed up on that last night it was deflating to know we were leaving. We’d all had such a good time working together and got to know each other so well during the trip — I honestly would’ve loved to have stayed longer.
"But one of the main positives in leaving was that we all left great friends and I’ll probably stay in touch with all of them.”
The trip was facilitated by an organization called University Campus Ministries. It connects with an associate organization in Mexico, Casas por Cristo, which nominates particularly needy families for the program.
Since 1993 with the help of 4,000 volunteers from all over North America, it has helped build homes for roughly 15,000 families.
“A house less than twice the size of my office, which isn’t big, typically houses a family of five down there,” says Ryland explaining how powerful a donation of one week’s time can be.
Typical day on the trip
The team would generally be up and eating breakfast while shaking off the chill from a very cool night’s sleep around 7:30 a.m. before heading out to the build site.
The students would work until noon, have a quick bite of lunch before digging back in until roughly 4:30 p.m.
The final day, on the other hand was a bit more intense as the team raced to finish the job, working until the sun was down in order to finish the home on time.
Though the days were long, Scathe says the nights were the best times.
“We’d all pitch in to make dinner and clean up.
"Then we’d meet to reflect on the day, before wrapping up with card games, which usually consisted of UNO. I know it sounds nerdy, but it was a lot of fun.”
Going out in the streets of Juarez was a paradoxical experience. Ryland says every block had armed police brigades but people were generally very happy and friendly in spite of their poverty.
“There was actually a lot of joy in the community,” says Scafe.
“There wasn’t a lot of despair about it. They’d all come over and help out any way they could when we were building. One family would even let us use their outhouse the whole time.”
The other focus of the trip was spending time at an orphanage called Operation Amigo. It is run by a group of Alberta businessmen and farmers.
From time to time they would visit the 80 orphans and play everything from soccer to piniata games. Ryland says the children’s faces lit up at the site of the guests.
“That actually turned out to be one of my favourite memories of the trip,” agrees Scafe.
“I probably had the least experience with kids and my Spanish was terrible but I got to hang out with some pre-teen girls and it was interesting to see that girls everywhere are the same.
“It doesn’t change because they live in an orphanage or because they live in Mexico. They were sweet little girls and we bonded and it was pretty touching.”
As touched as Scafe was by time spent with the children, Ryland was equally pleased with his two students.
“I was really proud that we had two students like Mac and Patricia representing MRU,” says Ryland.
“Both were really hard workers, doing all sorts of stuff they’d never done before. Even though we were a small group we had great representation and we made Mount Royal U look good.
“I would love to see more MRU students do this. It was really worthwhile.”
— Steven Noble, Feb. 5, 2010
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