Monday

Breakfast with beans again. The medical contingent went up to a Cantone which is what they call the mountain villages. I understood that they saw about 150 people. I stayed back with the construction crew and we worked on the clinic in Berlin. When we got to the clinic we found that the old roof had been ripped off and the new one placed back on the portion of the clinic we were refurbishing. (Materials were from your donations.) We were supposed to paint but we understood that we didn’t have any paint. So, we commenced to scraping. There were also some louvered windows which after a brief interchange with the hefe (boss) I understood we were to tear completely out. Fortunately we figured out that they only wanted us to remove and wash the pains not replace the whole window before I tore into them with a hammer. At lunch time one of the board members from the clinic brought us lunch. When he got there we discovered they actually did have the paint we just were not able to communicate well enough to figure that out. The El Salvadoran’s worked pretty hard in the morning but kind of lazed around for most of the afternoon. I was able to make friends with a couple of them and found out a little about their families. At the end of the day we ended up singing while we painted. Our best work was on “Oh where oh where can my baby be…” The El Salvadorans where impressed with our singing.

The evening was uneventful. I went into town and bought a couple of things. The party started to die down. Right before I headed to bed I helped one of the girls go into town and buy some cigarettes. We had to hit several shops before we found one that sold them and most of the shops were closing up. Cigarettes are a real luxury item there. A store may have 4 or 5 brands and only a couple packs each. Earplugs. Slept like a log.