Journalists on Site !
10 July 2000, by Rita Cruz

This week I am going to focus on a report that was done by one of the most read local newspapers on the construction site in Palmeira.

I was accompanying the journalists, showing them around, and leading them to the people they were interested in interviewing: the constructor, the Global Village Team (GVT) members, the member of the families who was there. Listening to the voice of all these people, as they explained to the journalist their very different experiences with Habitat reminded me of how important and special Habitat is and how amazing it is what solidarity can do.
The first person interviewed was Gl�ria Alves, the member of the families working there in the morning. We found her on the second floor of the first building, with her yellow hard-cap, working with Fernando�s team (the constructor). As she explains, she comes every Monday because it is not possible for her to work the whole Saturday. The conversation with the journalist was about her experiences with Habitat and her relationship with the Global Village Team. Language problems, in the second case, were obviously a barrier, but that does not imply that people don�t touch your heart. As it is, most of the team are really missed and the saddest part of working with a new team is that they will go away soon. I later learned that some relationships are really special, between the families and the Global Village Team. D. Rosas�s daughter, for instance, managed to write a short letter in English, with the help of a friend, to one of the GVT-members, thanking them and letting them know how much they are missed.

Conversations went on with two members of the Global Village Team, Brenda Balliet and Emily Jackson, teacher and student in �real life�. They explained what the spirit of a Global Village Team is all about. This actually turned out to be the main theme of the report, for it is very hard in Portuguese culture to understand how it is possible to give away one�s holidays and actually pay to work in construction! At first sight, it seems as apart from Portuguese culture as it could possibly be. But then again, maybe not...I remember how Doral, the international photographer of Habitat for Humanity was in Portugal last month and could not believe that, although exhausted from a hard day work.

Mr.Fernando could find the energy to pick up a spade and go help his neighbor that needed help with some work on his property. Perhaps Fernando Martins� is right then, and what needs to change in Portuguese mentality is that �we only help our neighbor�. Fernando Martins was the last person interviewed. Once the greatest disbeliever on the work of Habitat, Mr. Fernando managed to keep the journalists for himself for more than half an hour.

He just wouldn�t let them go until they heard everything he had to say. And it was such a pleasure to hear him! How he first thought Habitat was a project destined to fail, how he got involved because of a friend, how he could not believe that people who paid to be here on holidays would actually come to work! But he had a lot of stories now, to prove that he was wrong. And no matter that by working with Habitat he is not earning as much as he could earn working somewhere else. He is there for his experience as a human being. He likes good people, he likes working to and for them, and the human experience he is having is invaluable. Listening to him made me feel so proud of what Habitat is achieving in Portugal!

When I left the site, Mr. Fernando�s words still echoed in my mind. Especially when he said that he always thought the north of the country, where Braga is, was the most solitary and human place to live in Portugal. But now, after experiencing Habitat, he feels that we are so �small�, with so much to learn until we move from helping our neighbor to helping people that we never heard about, in a country that we don�t know.

P.S. Guess what! We were front page with this report!

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