To Mix and Minga, by Brendan P. Smith

Today we went to a Minga. The word Minga comes from the language of Quechua which basically means a work day. Around here, a Minga usually involves many local families coming together to help at a working project at someone’s house. Even though we are not a local family, we helped out Angel’s family today. We helped enlarge the area of Angel’s property so that he would be able to expand his house. Their house was very nice for the area that it was in. We had to do a lot of digging up dirt and moving dirt in order to make space. The work was really hard and strenuous. I never knew how heavy dirt could be.

When we got back to The Working Boys Center after a hard morning of work, we had a lot of time until our next activity. I decided to take some time to write in my journal about the day. When I was summarizing the day in my journal I realized that the house we went to the Minga at used to be just a hill. In order to have the nice house they have today, they had to dig a large hole into the hill while also building an actual house by hand. The work we did today was a very small percentage of what the family has to do to make a house. Today’s Minga made me realize that having a nice house in this area takes a very a large amount of time and work. I realized that I had to do nothing in order to have the nice house I live in today. For this family, they had to spend their valuable time, which they could be using to make money to support themselves, in order to have a house that could support a seven person family. I think taking out the trash is an annoying thing to do at my house but for this family and most of the families in this area, they have to work very hard to build their house by hand. After doing a few hours of what this family does on a daily basis, I became more thankful for my house. I have a very big house where I can just relax all day. For this family, like most of the families in this area, they live in a small house where they have to worry about simple things that I don’t even have to think about. Angel’s family had a leaky roof, which I would never have to worry about. This trip has truly been amazing because every day I become more thankful for the wonderful life I have.