Guatemalan construction

As a Student who is not working in San Pedro with the kids, my experience in Guatemala is different than the others' in a lot of ways. My project, working on constructing a school with the Construcasa program is done solely with my peers and with the crew of Guatemalan workers, none of which I would like to point out speak English. The workers are all frankley, quite short and skinny and do not appear to be any sort of laborer you would see in America. This being said I've never been more impressed with a group of workers, these little guys built most of a two story building using only two power tools, the rest being done by hand or with hand tools. The day that we laid over 10,000 pounds of cement for the floor of the second story, they used the second power tool I saw at the site, an automatic cement mixer. They would fill the mixer with buckets and shovels and turn it over once the cement was mixed. Then the foreman,Charlie, would catch it in a bucket until it was half full, by that point around 20 pounds, and he would throw it up to the workers on the second story, they would switch out in the different positions throughout the day. An hour and a half into the work we all took a break, I was sweaty, dusty, exhausted, half deaf from the mixer and in no state to speak, the workers gave out soda and instant noodles to everyone, covered head to toe in cement, smiling and laughing as if it was nothing. Earlier in the day charlie got a glob of cement in his mouth, another worker opened his mouth to laugh and was rewarded with a glob of cement in his mouth. These guys were unstoppable, they didn't even flinch at the idea of climbing down an unsteady, hand built ladder.

I've never had more respect for a group of workers than I did for these guys. That day they spent from 4AM to 1PM, mixing and throwing cement, and they spent the entire time smiling. It's so interesting, I've seen more people in dead end jobs and crippling poverty than ever before and every one of them that I saw had a smile on their face.