Each morning I was jolted awake by the abrupt hawking and scratching of the roosters perched on our tin-roofed room. Exotic birds peered curiously at us through the screened window as the interrupted moths scattered. Before daybreak, I strained to hear the distant chortle of the gas-powered corn grinder in the tortilla "factory" housed in a family's shed: "Putt-putt-putt- hiss-hiss-putt-putt-his... " It amazed me how quicly these sounds became familiar.
Soon after, the village animals would start their wake-up routine -- their bleating, howling and shrieking sounded like a circus choir. Only as the earliest fingers of the sun's ochre rays stretched tentatively into the village lanes did low human voices become audible. By the time sunlight bathed the eastern fields, the day had awakened every living creature in the village.
A short distance away from the eight-by-ten-foot concrete room in the community center that served as our guestroom, the village's sole typewriter awaited my day's efforts. The ever-present dogs and numerous village children gleefully followed me on my ten-minute walk down one of the main paths. We passed several of the village businesses; efforts to help the local people achieve self-reliance.
There was a bread-baking "industry," which had begun the previous year by a group of village women. Together with project leaders, the women built a central brick oven and baked dozens of loaves each day. The bread was sold to village families as well as to visitors on busses passing through the community.
There was also the beginnings of a basket-weaving center, started with the financial assistance of grants and individual contributions and the labor of student volunteers. The project leaders explained that progress was slow, because as a demonstration project, the construction techniques used must be replicable with locally available resources. The American program directors knew that the initiative, as well as the strategies, must be the local people's themselves, if the community's efforts would remain in the long-term. Therefore, construction practices that to me had first seemed awkward and unnecessarily labor-intensive, gained greater relevance as I began to understand the meaning of "appropriate technology."
Dispatching my "escorts" upon arrival at my destination took longer than the walk itself! But returning their toothy smiles and indulging their youthful games warmed me with a peace I can still recall today. Five days passed much too quickly.
Each afternoon, as I walked by the open doors of the villager's homes -- with the hard-packed dirt floors and peevish front-yard chickens -- I tried to imagine the tiny village in 20 years.
Would one-room, thatched-roofed homes be replaced by more spacious, or at least substantial dwellings? Would educational and medical facilities be built to ensure the children's health and development? Would farmers develop agricultural techniques to raise the families' subsistence-style of life? I at once felt called to try to make a difference.
