The Casa grew by inches. Ideas changed, different programs required different spaces, there were a lot of changes as we found our footing on just what a community center in a poor colonia in Mexico could do. There was always input from those who supported what we were doing. But honestly, Rob and I pretty much made it up as we went along. He probably researched community centers, but I just built what he said he thought we would need, and trusted the big picture that he seemed to have in his head. The regular volunteers really liked working on the Casa. They felt a vested interest in its outcome, and were terrific.
The first thing we built was a small office in the back corner of the lot. We had fenced off the front and back with 6′ chain link fencing. There was already a fence between us and the kindergarten, and one between us and our westside neighbors, a family that didn’t seem to be there very often. In the office, we could lock things up between projects that we didn’t need to take back stateside. The volunteers built that in two days, with a stout, locking door, and a small window, painted nicely inside and out, with their signatures painted on one bottom corner. There was a desk, and a nice fluorescent light in it, and several plugs on the wall, which we could use for extension cords when we were building things for the Casa. And a cement floor. The floor was less… um… planar than I would have liked it to be, but I didn’t yet have experience with trying to get a concrete slab perfectly flat and smooth enough for you to roll an office chair around. It was as good as I and the 3 volunteers could get it.
A year later, we turned the store in the pink house into a computer lab. I bought insulation and sheetrock, and wired in plugs along the wall over a continuous desk, on which the computers would go. I wired in can lights in the ceiling, with a dimmer switch. We put carpeting on the floor. It was cozy. It was a crazy job, with volunteers doing different things and bumping into each other in the small space.
Rob brought some donated computers, and had the phone company bring in their crappy DSL internet. I had met a welder, and he gave me a cheap price to weld up a burglar bar door to go over the door into the lab. The little computer lab struggled for several years, until we had money to buy some newer computers, and were able to find a local teacher that gave classes part time for us, and able to get wireless internet when it became available. Even so, lots of little kids had their first exposure to a computer in our little lab.
We needed bathrooms. Rob and others were initiating programs in the afternoons at Casa de Katie, after the school day, and the kids of the colonia could come and participate in them if they wanted. The volunteers had built about 10 picnic tables, and they were scattered about the open space outside the little pink house. That was where the afternoon programs took place. The kids needed a potty.
Looking into the future, Rob and I decided that the bathrooms needed to be made from cement blocks, a more permanent structure that would last through the changes that we hoped would be coming. And we needed it sooner than the next project in 6 months. I can lay blocks, but I am not an expert or fast, so I went looking for a mason. I drew up a sketch with two small bathrooms with a toilet and a shower pipe in the wall of each, and a drain in the floor. And a sink for hand washing on the outside.
Salvador knew a couple of masons there in the colonia, so we went and met 3 of them. They were all major alcoholics, which was sad, but common in the colonia. I picked the least ruined by their alcoholism of the three, Matteo, and talked with him, showing my little sketch, and he gave me a price. I arranged for Salvador to be his helper, so he could keep an eye on Matteo, and keep the work moving forward.
I took a couple weeks off work, and stayed down there, sleeping on Salvador’s floor, and arranging with his wife, Andrea, to share the cooking for his family, where I cooked every other night. And I turned them on to American cooking, which his family was so-so about, bemoaning the lack of tortillas when I cooked. Healthy meals, with vegetables were previously not a part of their diet. But they ate it when I hollered that dinner was ready.
Matteo, and Salvador, and I broke ground the next day. In spite of his drinking, Matteo was a nice guy, and truly a master mason. I learned a lot from him. We built the bathrooms in the very front corner of the lot, next to where the gate was. I ran the copper pipes for the plumbing. When the walls were halfway up, Matteo talked to me about the cement roof that would be put on last. I thought that it would be cool if the roof extended past the walls about 8 feet on the gate side, making a porte cochere entry, that we could put a lockable iron gate across. So we did that. I had the welder that made the computer lab door weld up some nice gates for the opening.
I was putting as much money into the local community as I could, to get the things done that the volunteers couldn’t do. I was walking back and forth daily, and got to know a lot of the people in the community, because I would stop and talk to anybody that I passed, and they were all curious about me, and what we were doing there.
Once the bathrooms were done, I checked with the city, to see when they could come and hook us up to the water and sewage. 2 months they told me. Wow.
When we had built the bathrooms in the primary school last year, and the city came to hook them up, I was there to watch them do it. The guy came on a sunday, with a water meter, and with a shovel, dug a hole in the dirt street out front, down to the water main, a 3″ pvc pipe buried about 5 feet down, and next to it, the sewage pipe, a 10″ pvc pipe. After he uncovered the pipes, I set the water meter, and dug a trench to the hole, and ran a sewage pipe and a copper water line out to him while he was digging. He was delighted not to have to do that part.
When it was time to hook in the water, he asked if I had a drill and a 3/4″ bit. I did, and ran an extension cord and gave him my electric drill with the bit. He told us to back away, and to be careful. I wondered why. I stood there anyway, looking at him down in the 4′ by 4′ hole he had dug, because my curiosity wouldn’t allow me not to. He got on his knees, and drilled a hole in the side of the water main. As soon as he broke through, he yanked the drill out, threw it quickly up over his shoulder and out of the hole, almost braining me standing there as I quickly jumped back, so that he would not be electrocuted by the water gushing out of the hole and onto the electric drill. Holy crap! Then he screwed a cone shaped thigamabob with a cut-off on it into the newly drilled hole, and as soon as the water was coming out of the thigamabob, he turned the cut-off off. I ran the copper to it, and he connected it. Then he borrowed my sawzall, and cut a hole in the top of the sewage pipe, and stuck our waste line into it, and we mixed up some cement and cemented the line in. Then we filled in the hole he had dug. All this took about an hour and 40 minutes. An hour for him to dig the hole, 10 minutes to hook it all up, and half an hour to fill the hole back in. Amazing. I paid the guy the $50 he asked for. Later, Salvador told me that he had pocketed the money, did the job on a Sunday when the water office was closed, and canceled the work order, and nobody was the wiser.
Back at the Casa de Katie bathrooms, a year later, I was sitting eating dinner with Salvador and his family, and Salvador broached the subject that we didn’t have to wait 2 months, that indeed, we could do what the city guy had done at the primary school, and cut out the middle man. The cone shaped thigamabob was available to buy at Materiales Sukasa. And we both had seen how it was done, so why didn’t we do it ourselves, on Sunday, two days hence? I asked him if he was serious, and he was, so we did. The only thing that I did not have was the water meter. Only the city could provide those. I figured that since it was a community center, for the benefit of the citizenry, it wouldn’t cost the city much water for two toilets, so we went ahead and did the whole thing.
We dug a hole, guesstimating where the water main would be by thinking about where it was from the primary school job up the street, and we only missed it by a foot. I got down in the hole with the thigamabob and my drill, and my big ass, and gave Salvador instructions to watch me, and the second that he saw the drill break through, to unplug it from the extension cord. So maybe I would not get electrocuted. I jerked the drill out as it broke through the wall of the water main, just like the guy did, and threw it up out of the hole, but Salvador had done what I said, and the drill was not connected. I did not get electrocuted. Phew!
The city, to this day, has no idea of our illegal hookup. I suspect we were not the only ones.
The next project, in the fall, I, with 12 volunteers, built a plywood classroom from the posts of the porte cochere over to the edge of our property. That provided good street side security for the front of the property. And some volunteers painted a nice sign, Casa de Katie, on the front wall, which we painted white.
About this time, Rob, in cahoots with the other people who were dreaming up programs for the casa, initiated a program that was to be amazingly successful. High school kids from the colonia would come and volunteer to run sessions for the middle school kids, giving them enrichment for what they were learning in their classes. And we found some enterprising middle school kids who could do the same for the primary kids. It was amazing to me as I passed through Casa de Katie, on my way to do my part of everything, to see these kids teaching kids. It really worked. Everybody’s grades went up. The little kids were not intimidated by the high school kids, like they were by their teachers, and the classes were not bound to a strict regimen like the schools were.
We started classes in the classroom by the front gate. In particular, one that had some good response, was coaching for women of the colonia to take the Secondary Level Certificate test, like a GED for secondary school graduation, which was necessary for them to get a job in a maquiladora,, the factories on the border that the USA and other countries build because of the cheap labor Mexico offers. We provided what materials were necessary to support a program, and found local people to teach what the lesson was to be.
We found a guy in town, Marco, a really nice guy, who wanted the job of Director of Casa de Katie, and he took over managing the day to day goings on. I became good friends with him.
Again, on a Sunday in the fall, when the volunteers had gone back stateside after a project, I was sitting at a picnic table with Rob, and we were talking about what the community center was bringing to the colonia. The computer lab always had kids at the computers. The classes to pass the Secondary Level Test had yielded 3 or 4 women who went and took it, and passed, and were now gainfully employed. We had birthday celebrations, and Quinceanera celebrations and a weekly Bingo game there in the Casa. There was even a burgeoning Chess Club.
“Sam,” he said,”There is one big complaint that I have heard from a lot of people. It is hot here in the bright sunlight during the afternoons, at these picnic tables. Really hot. We have tried fans, but it is hot. Can you do something to give at least some partial shade?”
“Say no more,” I replied.”
And the spring project became the building of the biggest fly roof I ever built. I had sketched a design for it, starting on the kindergarten side of the open area, at about 6 feet off the ground, and running up to a peak by the kitchen and computer lab of about 12 feet off the ground, and then angling down on the west side to enclose the space over the buildings. It was about 55 feet wide, and covered the outdoor space completely, from the porte cochere to the back property line.
I went down to Rio Bravo a couple days early, and had the lumberyard cut a bunch of long, rough cut 2×4’s, lots of long 1×4″s, and some 16 foot long 4×4’s, and a lot of roof tin. I had a pile of used roof tin panels that I had taken off jobs that I tore out up in Austin, and a pile of donated used tin from some of my friends who had it laying around, and it looked like a lot, but it was really only enough to cover about a quarter of the roof. I bought almost all the roof tin that Materiales Sukasa had in stock. 8′ sheets, 10′ sheets, 12′ sheets, and 16′ sheets. Robert, the owner, was my buddy for life. I dropped a lot of cash in his hands. They brought wood and tin out on their truck, on Thursday, the day the volunteers were driving down, and it took Salvador and I, and the truck driver 2 hours to unload it.
The volunteers included the carpenter that was burnt out before I started on the Mexico projects, and had not been back since. He had heard stories about the Casa from some of the regular volunteers, and came out of curiosity, so I immediately gave him my drawing, and put him in charge of the roof. Everything was there that he needed, and he had as many willing volunteers as he wanted, all he had to do was build it.
I took him over to the Casa early, before the volunteers were up, and we sat drinking coffee, and eating breakfast tacos that I cooked us up in the kitchen, and talking through what was to be done. He got pretty excited, and when the volunteers arrived, immediately went to work.
By the end of the day, we all had framed this gigantic skeleton of framing, suspended on 4×4 posts. It was enormous, and drew quite a bit of attention from the passing people. The second day, everybody got up on the roof, and started nailing down the roofing tin. I had assembled 8 hammers, and they were kept busy all day. By sunset, it was done. And, let there be shade.
Sunday morning I went back early, while the volunteers were packing up to leave, made some coffee in the kitchen, and took pictures of the gigantic roof in the sunrise. It was an amazing piece of workmanship. It was just what the doctor, and Rob, had ordered.
The roof completely changed the ambiance of Casa de Katie. It was now a coolish shady place to have lessons. And they could be held in the rain, though you had to shout to be heard over the noise of raindrops on the tin.
The programs that we had there in Casa de Katie went on for about 6 more years. They were wildly successful, and the Casa became a focal point of the colonia. Unfortunately, about that time, the board of directors and Amigos de las Escuelas ground to a halt. People were having kids and being involved with that, and nobody wanted to step up and keep it running, and community centers are not self supporting operations, and especially in poor colonias in Mexico. Without Amigos monetary input, there was no money to pay even the marginal salaries we offered, or the electric and water bills, or the internet.
I tried to keep it running for two more years, by seeking donations from my clients, and using money that I earned up in Austin, but it got to be too much for me, and I turned it over to the woman who was running it at the time, and she did nothing, and the doors of Casa de Katie finally closed, and the gate was locked. 4 years later I went back down to Rio Bravo to deal with my philanthropic efforts to keep girls in school, and teach them how to make good decisions, something that I had been doing for 16 years on my own, and it was still abandoned and locked up. That was the last time I went to Rio Bravo, because the colonia had become a battleground between rival drug cartels, and between them and the Federales, and it had become a war zone, and too dangerous for me. But while it lasted, Casa de Katie did great things.
Helping kids make better decisions is never a wasted effort. 
Taking an idea from its inception, and working to make it great is a very heady thing to do with your life.
For years it was my mission. And kept me out of trouble and off the streets.