Global Village Builds in Kyrgyzstan

Editor's Note: The following is a story written by Newport Beach volunteer Jene Meece during her July 2006 Global Village trip to Kyrgyzstan. Jene was one of 12 volunteers from the United States who volunteered to spend two weeks building Habitat for Humanity homes in the mountainous northern part of Kyrgyzstan. "The scenery was spectacular, the people were easy-going and happy, the food was delicious - fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh baked breads - and the 12 volunteers got along famously," said Meece. "I have never been around 12 people where not one person complained, even while we were working to the point of exhaustion." This was Jene's first Global Village build. "I jumped in with both feet. I trusted that Habitat would send us to a safe place and I trusted it would all work out."

"I'm in Kyrgyzstan and I'm smiling"

By Jene Meece

How in the world did Benny catch me smiling? I was exhausted. I was also having the time of my life-as long as I could be asleep by 8 p.m. We had just finished two days of slinging mud onto the interior walls of the home we were building for Toke, the patriarch of the Habitat family whose home we were building in Barskoon, Kyrgyzstan. We built a house as I regressed into a two-year-old child playing with glop!

It was an arduous process, actually. And keeping Toke (his name rhymes with okay) happy was the biggest of my worries. No matter how I mixed the mud and straw, slung the mud mixture onto the walls, or smoothed the walls until they were perfectly straight, Toke would give me "that look." "That look" meant I'd done the job, but not well enough. He'd have to put the finishing touches on it.

One afternoon, for 90 minutes nonstop, I scraped and dug plaster out of the hole for the window frame. No one could have done a more perfect job. I called Toke over. "Okay, Toke?" His four children were swarming around the site until they caught his eye, and then they laid low for an hour or so. I asked. (Okay was the only English word he knew.) He stood in front of my work. He gazed at the top quality job. He slowly nodded, and said, "Okay." I was ecstatic!! He couldn't help himself, however. He picked up my chisel and still had to slice a couple clumps out of the plaster.

Toke was so proud of his house. He had begun building it by himself. His wife, four children, and mother lived in the two room hut next to the home we were building. The government of Kyrgyzstan allotted his family this quarter-acre of land to farm apricots. The apricot trees in the back yard were almost ripe and ready for the trucks that would arrive from Moscow. His sole source of income came from the apricots sold to a conglomerate in Moscow once a year.

Each day we were there, his 80 year-old mom made us tea for our 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. breaks. She'd squat in the yard beside her samovar and keep the wood chips burning. His wife would prepare the six-inch high table with fresh bread and homemade jam under the apricot trees. His kids, when they weren't under our feet trying to help, were throwing the Frisbee Casio brought from New York. It was the first time they'd ever seen one, and they were excellent players after they learned to turn it right side up.

Toke made almost no money. But he seemed so rich to me. He was gruff and unsmiling, but at our farewell dinner as he thanked us through a translator, tears were peeking through. He didn't let any fall, and I may have been the only one to notice them, but here was a man extremely thankful to 12 Americans landing in Barskoon, Kyrgyzstan, and putting close to 600 hours of hard labor into building his home.

Benny caught me smiling because my time in Barskoon was the adventure of a lifetime. I'm a contractor's daughter, and during my work there I could feel my dad's presence. The Kyrgyzstan people mix cement the old fashion way. The way Bishop and Bob and Leroy, who worked for my dad, mixed it in 1960 in Atlanta. My dad would have told you it was done with elbow grease. I can attest to the elbow grease used in Barskoon - that's why we were all in bed each evening by 8 p.m.!