Yesterday I split concrete blocks with a hatchet

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One of my "jobs" at Chacocente is to tutor "Fito" (short for Gabriel) in 3rd grade Spanish, Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Science. Fito is 18. I don´t know anything about his parents as he stays in a house with another young adult on the project. Cherito is thinking of bringing in a few other young adult men in, if they can promise to go to school and help with the development of the project.

Fito and I eager went at it Mon, Tues, Wed and Thurs. We worked him understanding the various digits in 4-digit numbers (like 6,476) and being able to say them out loud. We worked on spelling words and reading 3rd grade stories. He was doing most of the homework I was giving him to practice what we worked on for our 2 hours every day. I rewarded him with N American chicklets. I think it was the drilling I was doing regarding the 4 types of sentences (declarative, interragative, imperative and exclamatory) that put him over the edge. Friday he came in and told me he hadn´t slept well over night and did not want to study. So I went and worked construction with the men, and a few of the woman (including Margarita´s mom, Rosa, who is moving bricks and shoveling sand, and is 6-7 months pregnant).

I heard from others that Fito was talking about moving back to the dump yesterday. Oh my gosh, was I being a workhorse with him? Come to find out he and his buddies at the dump had a practice of sniffing glue. It´s incredibly cheap as you would imagine. He thinks he can go back to the dump and hang out with these guys and not be tempted to sniff glue again. I was very impressed with some of the teachers who were really able to engage him in conversation. At the end, he´s decided to stay at Chacocente, and on Monday afternoon we´ll have a conversation about his work load!

My work with the guys--they are continuing their work on the school. It needs more rooms, it needs electricity, amongst lots of other things. I helped Melvin build a wall, which included mixing the cement and the sand, adding the bricks and spliting bricks with a hatchet when the space was smaller!

My other work at Chacocente has been going well too. I have a 1.5 hour meeting with the adults each day and they are sharing their "family shields" they´ve created to talk about their past, present and family characteristics. Yesterday we started conversations about the importance of communications. A great lead-in to some more of the issues they have in working together (don´t we all!). I´m excited. I will be spending the night there 1-2 times a week for the next 3 weeks to spend more time with the adults and to play more with the kids.

More to come. Have to get home before the sun sets.

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