Day one of the Legacy Build in Peru

By David Snell
Fuller Center for Housing president

Day one of the Millard Fuller Legacy Build was a great success. We’re building 10 new houses here. The masonry walls were built over the last month or so, and our assignment is to put down the floors, put on the roof and build the interior partitions. We have an outstanding corps of volunteers who have already distinguished themselves by their cheerfulness and hard work.

(View photos from the build here.)

Sheilla and I are on house 10 which will be the home of Juan Carlos and Kelly Lopez and their family. Juan Carlos is a pastor and his house sits next to his new church house on the edge of town. The biggest challenge we face is the long hike to get up to the site!

We got things kicked off yesterday with two welcoming ceremonies, one by the local government in Nuevo Imperial, the second by the families and their neighbors in La Florida. They were great events, full of speeches and music. Folks here do enjoy a celebration. This weekend was also the commemoration of Santa Rosa, the patron saint of Lima. Most of those celebrations seemed to take place at night and included a marching band that just wouldn’t stop marching and fireworks that wouldn’t stop booming. That was a little less joyful to these tired travelers.

The homeowners are truly engaged in this project. Every house has family members working alongside the volunteers — just the way it’s supposed to be. There is a great spirit here. Like all of these builds there’s also a quality of a family reunion in the air. Old friends are getting together once again to do something truly worthwhile and have a great time doing it. The average age of this group is surely over 50 — we need to get more youngsters involved before all of us old folks seize up!