Mexico Pt 2: The House
11 x 22.
242 square feet.
3 kids, 2 adults.
The bathroom is in an outhouse connected to their old home, the one with the caved in roof, the one that we were replacing that week. You couldn’t flush the toilet because it wasn’t connected to running water. There was a bucket that Victor filled up and you dumped water in when you were finished. It only smelled a little bit, but it was an outhouse so no one minded.
Their house was messy, cramped. There was a small TV perched on top of a cabinet. It was the highlight of the room and our eyes were immediately drawn to it when we snuck a peak into the shadowy house.
“It’s amazing how little we actually need,” people constantly say when I tell them about the house we built and how much better it was than their old place.
11 by 22 and two-hundred and forty-two square feet. Just two rooms. An improvement.
“It’s true. It’s amazing,” I say. “Three little girls and two adults all in that one bedroom house. The one we built was bigger, but not by much. They were pretty happy too.”
It’s easier to be content with poverty when it’s the status quo.
When the house was done, it looked huge to our eyes. Eight and a half feet tall, it was the tallest house we’d ever seen. We’d built it with our hands, knew every nook and cranny. We knew the flaws, the perfections. We had hammered the frame, like putting together a puzzle. We had lifted the walls and laid the roof on top. When you finish a puzzle, it’s more than just a picture. When you finish building a house with your hands, it’s more than just a house.
Construction is contemplation. You never really see something unless you build it yourself. We had contemplated that house, and it became taller than our much larger houses in the US.
Eleven by twenty-two. Two-hundred and forty-two square feet. Eight feet tall.
When we gave it to Victor, he shook all of our hands, even McKenzie’s, the little 8th grade redhead. He said, “Muchas gracias. Es bonita.” Their little girls drew us pictures of their new house, us standing around it holding hands.
I was sorry to leave that place, that country. I had contemplated it, and I knew it, if only a small part. 242 square feet of it was mine, ours. We gave it away, but the memory of it was still there. It was a little bit of home in Mexico.
What a joy, to give home to someone! It was a small home. But home should never be diminished.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Joe Bunting the Monk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on July 1, 2008 at 11:41 am cari wrote:
I like that idea of being so connected with our shelter, with our hands, with our food and with our earth. You lifted the walls and you laid the roof. You contemplated it, and you knew it. That is huge in our eyes.