Semillas de Amor: Meet Victor

Ryan, an intern at Semillas de Amor writes about a young man who has been helping around the center:

Only 14 years old, Victor seems too mature to be considered a child.  The youngest of four, he lives in a house made of wooden planks and a thatch roof where he chops wood for his mother to cook with and cares for the donkey and various chickens that roam the yard providing the family with transportation and food.

 As he watched from his front door the construction of the dining hall and storage rooms occurring across the street, Victor quietly approached and began to mix the cement we had prepared for the cinder blocks that would form windows for the building.  As the days progressed, so did Victor´s revelation of his bricklaying skills.  Rather than stopping with cement mixing, Victor helped me to measure the sand, rocks, and water required to make a mixture and then helped to haul each of the materials to the construction site.  With a self constructed sieve made from plywood and scrap metal from the donkey´s feed bin, Victor insisted that the cement mixture be sifted before the water was added in order to guarantee that the mortar set right.

Although Victor continues teaching me about brick laying, I´ve learned more from him about the importance of hard work and example.  Victor is a leader at his school and in his small community.  He works hard at home and he cares about what happens outside the home.  With limited funds, hiring labor to build a dining hall and storage rooms proves to be an impossibility.  But Victor´s actions have encouraged other children in the community to collaborate on the project.  With their help, the walls go up brick by brick.  Although the process is slow, the experience has proved invaluable-- maybe not for Victor, but for his community of peers and for me.