Enjoying Brophy Students in Peru! By: Margaret Daggett

I have tagged along on this Peru trip with my husband, Mr. Daggett, for the purpose of seeing Peru.  But I´ve had the pleasure of hanging out here in Peru with some amazing kids!  Here are just a few of my impressions.

 

I spent most of our time in Pisco being sick, but I did attend the baptism and the party following.  What a hoot to watch how the cultures blended as the family welcome us all into their home where they had moved all the furniture against the wall and turned up the music for dancing!  The students clustered, encouraging one another to be the first to ask a young lady to dance--Adam did it!  Soon everyone was dancing.  Jimmy and Joe were entertaining the little boys with jokes, wrestling and nonsense.  Roger even was able to charm Adrianna (the 2 yr old who was baptized) to dance with him--and she did not warm up to any of the rest of us!

 

When Ben had his soccer accident, it was interesting to see all the students surround him, offering their amateur medical advice, lift him into the taxi and be very solitious.  Then they all made sure he was included in everything: bringing him home food when he couldn´t go to dinner with us, helped him get around before he got the crutches, carried his luggage, helped him on and off the buses.  They were all the best EMT´s!  And, Ben, never one to take advantage, did not complain at all.  But once he got those crutches, he has become VERY independent.

 

Here in Tacna, I have had the chance to work with the students on the work site--I did not think there would be any work that I could do or that Ben could do,

 

 

but someone found some!  The land here is sandy and rocky and there are lots of earthquakes so the people have developed a building process that is significantly different from the US.  Initially, very deep footings are dug.  But because the land is so sandy, it is necessary to wet the ground to prevent cave-ins along the trenches.  Here are the students on the first day of digging:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time the site is ready for pouring footings these trenches will be almost 3 ft deep.  It took the students 3 days to complete the digging.  Peter was the most steadfast in the trenches, choosing not to rotate to other jobs. 

 

The corners are structurally reinforced by the creation of a concrete pillar that requires a rebar cage.  This is built in several steps.  First the rebar, that comes coiled, is cut into short lengths:

 

Then it is pounded out straight to remove the curve from the coil:

Then it is bent into a rectangle: (Jim started this job but Blake took over and made literally 190 of them!)

 

 

Someone cuts small wire into hundreds and hundreds of 10¨ lengths: (guess who got this job!)

Finally, the rectangles are tied to larger rebar with the small wires to create the cage for each pillar.  The house we are working on requires nine pillars so the students work on these and the digging at the same time, rotating jobs to keep all the muscles warm:

But the most important part of all of this is that while the students work, their amazing minds keep going!  There are philosophical discussions of the value of any human life, theological discussions of limbo and hell, deep analyses of different teaching styles of the Brophy teachers, as well as the ever popular, who makes the best hamburger, who is the best soccer player, what is the best car, stereo, band, movie, video game, etc. etc.  Teenagers are remarkable how they can keep all these various topics active in their brains while their bodies continue to move to accomplish someting totally unrelated!  AND, they still have the energy to play sports after a full day of hard labor:

 

What an amazing experience this is!  I wish everyone could have as much fun as I am having!