Last weekend's Adventure: Building a home in 1 day!

This past weekend I was involved in an amazing adventure.  I’m going to start at the beginning, and then tell you about the weekend and what we accomplished.

About 6 months ago we had a presentation at our Rotary Club, the Rotary Club of Santa Cruz Sunrise about a project that we were going to embark on to build a home in the Sonoran desert west of Tecate, Mexico in one day.  I immediately wanted to participate for many reasons:

-          First because I was completely intrigued by the idea of building a home in 1 day

-          Providing housing and security for a family

-          Working together with 11 other Rotarians on an International Community Service project

So, in QTR fashion, I enthusiastically said YES immediately, knowing that an incredible adventure awaited, and that it would be meaningful, memorable and fun!

What transpired was something that I am ridiculously proud of and will be a core memory for me.  We spent 4 remarkable days together with 11 of my fellow Rotarians.  It was inspiring, and we learned so much about each other and became closer friends because of it.  It was an emotional time for me personally, and we made an enormous difference in the life of this family.

We all paid for our flights, hotel and meals, and each of us raised $1,200, or more, for the materials to build the home.  The current cost of materials to build the home is $12,364 – yes, the whole house!)  Our job was to provide the labor, to bring our hearts and our smiles to the worksite.  We didn’t need to have the skills to build the home, as we were led by an amazing human named Hector who has committed his life to building homes for people and teaching others the construction trade.  Over the past 30 years he has constructed approximately 3,000 of these homes.  The design has changed and improved over time, but they build the same home repeatedly, so the process is simplified.

We got up at 6:30 am and we all made lunch for ourselves and for the other workers and for the family that we were building the home for.  We ate breakfast at the hotel and boarded the vans for an approximate :35-minute drive to the homesite.  We drove up a steep rutted dirt road (probably the steepest ruttiest road I have ever been up.  The area had approximately 50 homes and partially built homes and other shacks that families were living in.

We arrived and the cement slab was already poured, and all the building materials were on site and waiting for us to begin.  The family of 5 had been living in a dirt floor shack right behind our building site for the past 2 years.

After a small introduction and inspiration by Hector, the construction started!

One team was working on the framing while the other team was painting the plywood siding (16 pieces of plywood were painted blue), the trim and the exposed rafters.

We put together each of the outer walls, lifted them up and braced them, then an interior wall splitting the two rooms of the house, then the wall that divided the rooms from the main room of the house.  While that was going on, the siding started going up, and as it was going up, the bracing came down (and the wood that was used for the bracing was reused later at the end of the day).   Plywood was lifted up for the floor of the loft.  That gave us some much-needed shade! The rafters were going up at the same time the electrical crew team started pulling the electrical and putting in electrical boxes for switches, plugs and lights.  The stack of drywall was then brought into the home and stacked against the wall.  The screw guns came out, and we started putting up drywall.

We took a needed break for lunch and ate the sandwiches we made for ourselves and for the other workers and for the family that we were building the home for.

After lunch, we cut out the windows (I used a router for the first time in my life), and the tape and mud team started.  The roof was finished, the trim went up, the door was hung, the electrical box put into place.  There was even a copper pole pounded into the ground to ground the electrical.  Although the electrical is in place in the home, there currently isn’t any electrical to the location.  But it is ready whenever electricity arrives to that neighborhood.

At the end of the day, we gathered in a circle at the front of the home and went around saying what the day meant to each of us and blessed the house and congratulated the family on their new home.  I couldn’t stop crying due to my emotions about the living conditions that that family had been living in for the past 2 years.

We drove away tired, dirty, with paint on everyone’s bodies and clothes.  But with full hearts of satisfaction.  Back at the hotel we shared the highs and lows of the day and what we learned.  It was very emotional. 

There was a lot of conversation about how much more we could have done, but we talked about the fact that what we did was life changing for the family and that there is no end to the work that could be done.  The possibilities and the needs are infinite.

In the end, 12 Rotarians accomplished building a home in one day.  It was an accomplishment that I will always be proud of.  I won’t be able to ever forget the shack that the family previously lived in, nor the beautiful little home we built for them.  This was QTR, which reminds us to make every day meaningful and memorable, to maximize fun and adventure, and to make time for the things that bring us joy.

There were scores of reasons for me not to go on this Rotary service trip.  My life was enhanced by saying yes and joining these 11 special friends on a trip of a lifetime.

Here are photos of the project from beginning to end:  https://markjunod.smugmug.com/Mark-and-Laura-Junod-Family/2024-10-Tecate-Mexico-home-build-begin-to-end

Here are more photos of the complete trip:  https://markjunod.smugmug.com/Mark-and-Laura-Junod-Family/2024-10-Tecate-Mexico-Rotary-International-Service-Trip

If you are interested in the non-profit we collaborated with on this project it is Finding Sophia:  https://www.findingsophia.org/

If you are interested in the Rotary Club of Santa Cruz Sunrise, here is our website:  https://portal.clubrunner.ca/2276

If you are interested in Rotary International:  https://www.rotary.org/en