Felipa - part 1

PazSalud recently met an elderly woman named Felipa who lives on the Salvadoran coast not far from Puerto Libertad.  She was living alone in a dilapidated tin lean-to and had built her furniture out of rocks she collected from the nearby creek.  When the heavy rains fell they poured through the many holes in her roof, soaking her and her meager belongings.

Her visitors chair

My father came to El Salvador in October of 2015 and we visited Felipa to give her a PazSalud quilt.  He was so moved by Felipa's living conditions and her positive, resilient personality that he committed to helping her in whatever way she wanted.  Maira (the local CIS promoter) and I talked to Felipa and she told us that what she needed most was a new roof so we got some materials estimates, drew up a proposal and my parents, Jim and Jan Streff, generously donated the funds needed to help her.

Shortly after, I became engulfed in planning PazSalud's General Medical Mission and didn't have the time needed to focus on Felipa's house.  Meanwhile, life intervened and Felipa was going to be forced to move out of her shack because the property it was on was changing ownership and she was no longer allowed to live there.  Fixing her roof wasn't the problem; she had to find a place to live.  Her daughter, who lives nearby, invited her to live on her property but she was going to need to build a place of her own.  So Maira assembled a team of volunteers comprised of builders, carpenters and general laborers, put together a revised budget, got us a good deal on materials and supplies and on Saturday (April 2) I met everyone at the constructions site and we began to build Felipa new house.

We first had to level the land to create a foundation for her house, build a retaining wall out of rocks we foraged from the dry riverbed close by, clear some overhead mango tree branches that could be hazardous in the rainy season, construct the framework and begin applying the zinc sheeting we'll use for walls and a roof.

Even with 15 volunteers on Saturday and Sunday and working 10 hour days, we weren't able to finish.  I'll go back next Saturday (April 9) to hopefully finish the job.  We still have a lot of work to do but we need to finish before the rainy season begins (typically in mid-May) and help Felipa move in to her new surroundings.