Dust, Sweat, and Truck Rides: Stove Material Buying Day!

Text and photos by Robyn Nielsen except as noted

Stove material buying day started off early Wednesday morning. All of our new stove families, students, staff, and interns met at Pop Wuj before marching off to Democracia Market, where a large industrial truck was waiting to take us to buy the supplies for 12 new safe stoves.

Meeting the truck at the Demo

After purchasing the chimneys, stove stops, and doors for the stoves the next stop was the brick yard. 

Shoveling sand and loading bricks

1,320 bricks were bought and loaded into the truck by students, interns and a few nice employees of the brick yard while the stove families were busy shoveling sand into costales. 

With the wind in our hair from standing in the back of the truck, we made two more stops for cement and heavy cement blocks then we were off to Llanos del Pinal for delivery. 

View from inside the truck (photo by Elizabeth Barnes)

First delivery stop

There was a definite sense of community as we formed assembly lines, passing bricks and blocks from the truck to the homes. 

Creating an assembly line

Everybody worked together until each family had all the supplies for a new safe stove. 

Carmencita saying thank you to all of the workers after our last delivery

The work was hard, there was a significant amount of dust and dirt in the air and on us, but the comradery, laughs and working for a good cause made it worth it. Not to mention the new views of Xela we got from standing on top of a thousand bricks in a tall truck. 

Tired and dusty workers relaxing on the ride home to Xela

It was the fastest we have ever finished a stove material buying day — HUGE thank you to everybody who came out to help! Next step: our stove fundraiser dinner! Read about it on the blog next week.