good intentions in the south

This weekend was... infinitely interesting. Our school organized a trip to go build houses in the earthquake affected regions in the south (in partnership with the non profit Un Techo Para Chile), so a lot of us, eager to help, signed up for the trip.
We were told to arrive at 9:45pm sharp to take the bus south, and didn´t actually leave until 1 am. Little did I know that this was a huge indication of how the rest of the weekend would pan out. We arrived in Chillán early Friday morning, and we were forced to wait on the bus for 3 hours because the organizers didn´t know where we were supposed to be dropped off. When we got to the school gym where we were staying, everyone was excited and changed into their work clothes and was ready to go build houses. Hours ticked by as we all just hung out in the gym, playing frisbee, sitting around, waiting for something to happen. By this time it was 1pm, so Jenna and I decided to go out and grab some lunch and walk around. When we returned, everyone was gone- of course the minute we decide to leave the gym, the rides come and pick people up.. So, we waited around some more, drove in a truck with the organizers for an hour, then came back to the gym. The other groups didn´t get much done either, because there were no posts for them to build the foundations with so they just dug the holes. We were supposed to all go over to the school where we were sleeping at 7, and in reality we finally got there and ate at midnight.
The next day, Saturday, we woke up early and had a ´nutritious´ breakfast of white bread and marmelade, and then we all got dropped off at our building sites. I was in a group with Jenna, Cassidy, William, and 2 chileans. We got to the house at 9:30 and greeted the sweet, old man and old woman, and then he showed us the spot where we were to build the house. It was a space 3.2 metres wide (when the house is 3 meteres wide), nestled inbetween a ditch and a cement wall. Hmm, we thought, is this a good idea? Looking at the supplies, we realized we didn´t even have a tape measure, and without a tape measure there wasn´t much we could do since we didn´t know where to dig the holes. It was 12:30 when we got the tape measure, and we got to work measuring out where we wanted our posts. We had no level, either, so we were just trying to use some string to make sure the posts were even. The ground was really hard to dig through, and each hole took forever to dig. So, the entire day was spent digging 15 holes, measuring them out with string and a tape measure that wasn´t long enough.
Our group was behind schedule since we got no work done on Friday, and Saturday was spent digging holes, so on Sunday we knew we had to hurry up and get the house done. After arriving at the site, the old man informed us that he had actually had a level the whole time! So we carried the super heavy pre-made floors over the ditch and set them on top of the posts. It wasn´t perfect, but considering that we didn´t have any of the right tools it was pretty good. We figured we had to redig 2 holes, and then we made some creative fixes for the other poles to make sure the floor was supported. We nailed in the floor and put up the walls to make sure that the floor was even enough for the walls to work out, and it was. So, we were moving along at a good pace, when the car with the overseers pulls up. The walk over to our site, and spend a few minutes squatting down, looking at the posts. They tell us that we have to dig up 2 more posts on the corners because the floor wasn´t completely covering them. We tried to tell them that it would be fine since there were 15 posts that would still support the floors. No, they said. During the next 6 hours, we gringos watched as they dug up every single post and moved it one centemeter, and when they finally put the floors back on, guess what- it was exactly the same as we had done it that morning!!!! frustration!!! So there we were, back to where we started. And then the sun set and we left the poor people with only a floor. That day, Sunday, we were supposed to have left to go back to Santiago at 1pm, then it was pushed to 5pm, then 12am... we finally got back to Santiago at 5 am.

So that is just the description of what happened this weekend, and I really don´t know how to feel about it.
It was so incredibly disorganized, to the point where on Friday we literally got nothing done. When we did get to the sites, everyone was lacking supplies, tools, parts of the houses, etc. Every time frame they gave us was ultimately pushed back at least 3 hours.

It was also one of the best cultural experiences I have had in Chile. The school group was made up of gringos and Chileans, and this was the first time I had actually met lots of people from my University here. We bonded by us showing them all the dirty Chilean words we know, and us teaching them all the dirty english words. We played games together, slept in the same rooms, ate together, and did lots of talking. They were all really sweet kids.
But on the other hand, I felt like it was also a sort of culture clash. Especially in the smaller house-building teams, there was a lot of tension between the exchange students and the locals.. For example, our spanish (especially construction vocabulary) is obviously not perfect, but that made the chileans think that we had absolutely no idea what we were talking about, and they tended to dismiss every suggestion or comment that we made. It was really frustrating for some people to try and communicate through the language barrier. On Sunday in our group, it was definitely like the Chileans took over our site, re did everything that we had accomplished, didn´t listen to any logic we were giving them, and they made us lose valuable time only to come up with the same results we did.
It was really, really frustrating the way everything was going, from the time wasting, lack of supplies, etc. But luckily, our group decided to look at the comedy of the situation, rather than get angry. By Sunday afternoon, we were all so disillusioned, frustrated, and had given up trying to convince the Chileans that the posts were fine and we could go ahead and finish the house.

positives: the country side was beautiful and all the leaves were changing for fall; the old man and woman who we were building the house for were so incredibly sweet and offered us so much food and coca cola; we met lots of new Chilean friends and I spoke lots of spanish; we had a lot of fun laughing at night in the crowded rooms; I got to spend time with people from my program; everyone had good intentions coming out there; I am always very humbled when I see how simply people live- he lived in a shack made out of sheet metal, yet they were so eager to share with us what they had and were so appreciative of our help and so excited to have us there at their house; our group had a fun time joking around on Sunday

negatives: disorganization, inefficient use of time, lack of tools, food they provided for all our meals= white bread, white pasta, white rice, and cookies; the non profit organization had 100 willing hands and yet because of their disorganization we only got 7 houses built (not to mention this organization is 12 years old and the earthquake happened 2 months ago); the old man was promised a house for Friday yet by Sunday we left him with a floor;