Family Matters

We found a whole new meaning to garbage bags and staples on day five of shack week. A classic Mexican fence. We started work at 8am grumpy and tired, not looking forward to the long work day ahead. With intense team work we made it through shoveling, hot sun, making new friends with spiders and stretching plastic to its max and holding it in place with staples. By lunch time we were more than ready for our leftover pasta and were happy to split our two packs of M&M’s ubuntu style. With a little more energy, motivation and jokes we were ready to wrap the yard with some more plastic and staples. The wind picked up but we managed to get through with some laughter, dressing up with the plastic, giving away some scraps to a boy who wanted to make a papalote (kite) and zero spider bites (phew).

Although we were grumpy and exhausted in the morning, the sun brought out our smiles as always and we finished the job happy and sooo ready for breakfast for dinner – pancakes. Now this was a gong show! We discovered that pancakes don’t taste that well with sand and rocks, they taste better with a lot of syrup and that eating the pancake mix doesn’t taste all that bad.

It’s crazy when we think about all the little things that would usually bother us at home that we don’t even think about now. For instance, washing our vegetables, dirt on our plates and our dirty hands. Not sanitary at all, however this is the every day life of many families out here. The constant dust makes it difficult to live any other way. We have really been hit with the reality that we are so privileged to be living how we do back at home. We have family, entertainment, clothes, money, electricity, hot water and a warm, clean place to sleep every night, yet we still find little things to complain about. The only thing that really matters is having your family by your side, no matter what circumstance you are in. All the other worries are just extra. We have truly come together this week as a family, trying to survive with very little but still stay positive and happy with what we have, because there is no way we could get through without each other.
Ubuntu. <3