COMARCA!

We are now in the Comarcas. From what I gather, the Comarcas are the Indigenous peoples designated land, much like our Native American Reservations in the US. Here we stay on a Jesuit compound, in one large room! Well, the girls sleep in one large room, and the boys stay in another. While the teachers stay in the priests house- with AIR CONDITIONING! They have earned it though, with all the work they have put into this trip.
My trip into the communities started with a town called Soloy. Soloy was probably the most poverty stricken community I have ever seen in my life. The houses were made from tin, sticks, old wood and dirt. The people used the larger sticks placed in the dirt for walls. If they had tin they covered the sticks with it, but if tin wasn‘t available they used blue tarp. The only thing differentiating the inside floor from the ground outside the house was that they patted the clay down inside the house to make it more like a floor. Some slept on mattresses that they placed on sticks to serve as a make-shift bed. The less fortunate used large slabs of plywood to sleep on, also raised with sticks. There are no doors and no privacy. The “house” was just one large room separated by sheets hanging from the wall. If they had sheets to spare that is.
It is very hard for me to see people live like this, and I really just want to do more for them. They are so grateful for everything we have done, so I can at least feel like I have made some sort of difference.