Belize Mission Trip: The Construction Site

Aside from fiddling with a few computers, carrying pills back and forth, and interpreting between American doctors and their Spanish-speaking patients, I was also able to get a little bit of actual, honest-to-God work done on this mission trip. A construction team came along with the medical team to pour the foundation of a new church building. The building was to replace the one in which the service was held that we attended on Sunday, which was small and old. I didn't really feel like part of either team when I went down: I was the designated tech guy. Nevertheless, when I found my work at the schools mostly done, and the hospital team not desperately in need of translators, I was glad to be a part of the team that prepared and poured the foundation, and remained so for the latter half of the week. The work was pretty straight-forward. We had to cut rebar, tie it into the proper forms with lengths of wire and suspend it at the right height in the trenches. We didn't have a grinder, so all the cutting was with a hacksaw. The trenches also had to be filled in so the they were all level at the bottom (where they were too deep), and some of them needed to be lined with boards (where they were too wide). On Friday, the cement trucks were supposed to arrive at 1:00. We were ready early, but they didn't arrive until 3:30, so there was a lot of sitting around and waiting. While we waited, the weather kept getting more and more rainy. When the trucks arrived, they would pour, and we would use shovels to spread it around, then afterwords it would would be leveled with boards. After two loads were poured, there was significantly less cement than had been calculated, so we had to order a third load. It arrived just as it was getting dark, so we had to use headlights in order to see.

Making the rebar forms Mounting rebar in the trenches The school provided lunch Pouring cement