Surprising Lessons I Learned from Building a House in Africa
Why doing good feels good
They turned off the water in my apartment building yesterday and it was so inconvenient.
For seven hours, I was without the basic need of water.
When I went to brush my teeth, I couldn’t. The dishes sat in the sink, unrinsed. This was a planned outage, affecting the entire building, so don’t pity me too much. At some point, I left and went shopping.
First world problems.
Up to 70% of our bodies are made of water. We will die of thirst before we die of hunger. Water is a BFD.
My lack of water during the outage was strictly a matter of inconvenience. While I wasn’t angry at the situation, I kept looking at the clock, thinking, “Only a few more hours to go…”
At least I had electricity. That would have been the ultimate smackdown.
I just had to make it to 5:00 p.m. As the magic hour drew near, a memory came barreling toward me that nearly knocked me over.
“Oh yeah. I’ve done this before. I went without running water. And electricity. For six days.”
Before you scream, “Pity party!” let me explain. I voluntarily signed up for a build in Zambia through Habitat for Humanity. If you haven’t looked at a map recently, Zambia is a land-locked country surrounded by eight other countries on the continent of Africa.
The Habitat idea started with my friend, Domi, when she told me about her upcoming trip; “I’m doing a Habitat build in Portugal!” Before that conversation, I thought that Habitat for Humanity built houses only in the U.S.
While building a house for anyone is a worthy cause, the opportunity to travel and do a good deed was hard to pass up.
Waka Waka Hey Hey
I went online that day and narrowed down the potential places that fell within the two weeks I had off: Guatemala and Zambia. Guatemala was too hot in the summer, and I had never been to Africa. I wrote to the Habitat trip leader, Tricia, and our interview call was set.
Tricia: “Building in this particular village is an unusual situation for a first-time builder. On most of the Habitat builds, we stay in hotels, but in this village, we sleep in tents or under mosquito netting. In sleeping bags. You will not have electricity or running water. You’ll have to “bath” with a solar shower.”
Me: I remember snickering, thinking she was making a joke about the shower.
Tricia: “Do you know what a solar shower is? You can buy one online for $20. Get a headlamp and flashlight while you’re at it. You’ll need it when you use the outhouse at night.”
Three months later, with a headlamp, a borrowed tent, my son’s sleeping bag, and all the hand sanitizer I could carry, I landed in Lusaka, Zambia.
Not a 7-Eleven in Sight
In Africa, everything moves at its own pace, and the road trip to the village up north took the entire day. There was one stop for snacks, where we were instructed to buy anything we might need because there was no shopping in the village, not even the African equivalent of a 7-Eleven.
Buy it now or do without.
When we finally arrived at the village, it was headlamp dark. No lights, no flickering TVs, no electricity. As our van pulled up, the entire village surrounded us, cheering, singing, and dancing in time to a welcome song. I felt like a minor celebrity.
That was my first indication that Zambia was a magical place.
Since there were no hotels in this village, we had to sleep in houses that were donated by a village family for our use. These houses had been built by a previous Habitat team, so it gave us an understanding of what the house that we would build would look like.
The team split up into two groups — the men would sleep in one house, and the women would sleep in another. When we walked in, there was no furniture in the home; there was nothing inside at all.
We dropped our supplies and made up our bedding on the concrete floor, using our headlamps as light.
You know that saying that you can do anything for a set amount of time if you put your mind to it? You can.
On Habitat builds, there is a lot of dirt. There is also concrete, mud, water, sand, stones, brick, and mortar. There is not a lot that is clean; it is a build site, after all. The roads of the village were red dirt, coating everything in a warm shade of terracotta.
Each day as we left the build, we would pick up our solar showers, filled with well-water that had been warming in the sun. We showered outside in our bathing suits, a form of entertainment for the villagers, while quickly scrubbing off the red dirt for fear the water in the solar shower would run out.
How quickly you can get used to something when you know you don’t have to do it forever.
What was it like to work without electricity and running water for six days? It was exactly as you would expect, except that it wasn’t.
Any minor nuisances that I might have complained about were outweighed by the pros of removing digital distractions from my life. The benefits of not using a cell phone. There were solar chargers that I could have purchased, but there is a thrill in removing myself from digital that was so therapeutic.
The Hidden Joys of Unplugging
Without having constant access to my cell phone, I noticed things I wouldn’t have if I had been staring at my screen.
I noticed that the village children played soccer together every day. I noticed that the children would be waiting outside our door each morning to walk us to the build site, and then they would gather back after school to watch us build, as if we were live theater. I noticed that the meals were cooked by villagers over a fire, and each day was like the lottery; you never quite knew what you would get.
I noticed that everything we did was done as a team; we ate all our meals together, sang together, laughed together, and played soccer together. Even at night, we shared rooms, tents, and mosquito nets.
Instead of being on our phones, we danced with Zambians as they beat out a rhythm on the drums.
Everything we did that week, we did together. What I have a hard time remembering is that we didn’t have water or electricity. The pictures I took don’t show this. Instead, they show friends laughing, children playing, and houses being built.
The Zambians I met were kind, generous, and sincere. That is what I remember about my time in Zambia.
The houses did get built, each with three rooms — one living area and two extra rooms. These two houses provided a home for a vulnerable population — grandmothers who were resigned to raising their orphaned grandchildren. The homes we built did not have a kitchen; the villagers cooked outside — another way for them to socialize and strengthen their community.
It Feels Good to Do Good
Scientific evidence will back the claim that giving can lead to better health and provides mood-boosting vibes; doing good will make you feel good. We are happier when we give to others. We are fulfilled when we can offer a small gift that can change someone’s life.
While I started this post by talking about my inconvenient lack of water for seven hours, the overall lessons I learned from the Africans in this small village were:
1) Appreciate your family, friends, and community.
2) By stepping outside your comfort zone, you can learn humility and gratitude.
3) It is important to be thankful for the small things.
Give something back. Do good. You won’t regret it.
