When I first arrived in my cite I invited the community to a soccer tournament in a volunteer’s site about a 30 minute drive from Cuesta Marina. Little did I know that the tournament would begin talk about making a soccer field behind Mirtala’s house. The men in the community had a lot of energy and motivation to build a field. The problem was that the land sloped, a lot, and it had big protruding rocks right in the middle of the field. Even though there was a lot of desire, it takes a lot more to build a field than a machete and a lot of talk- we needed a big mama machine- but they definitely came to recognize that. With my luck a friend of mine introduced me to a high ranking member of the army. He and some army majors came to look at the field, and before we knew it we had engineers measuring and evaluating the land. This was a fast pace operation. However, once the army promised the machinery the process began to slow down.

It took four months of constant annoyance to get the machinery delivered from the army, but it came! At the beginning of June a week after Leticia and I had gone to say it’s either now or never, a worker arrived with the machinery ready to work. When the machinery arrived the kids ran out of their houses yelling “it’s here, it’s here!! It really came.” Minus some of the complications of the machinery breaking for a couple days and not having enough funds to buy all the gas, we persevered and didn’t let little obstacles get in the way. The machine worked for two weeks and by the last day everyone was aching to get out there and play: the girls play softball and the boys play soccer but the field is big enough for everyone. We have been playing out there for a week now, and it is so beautiful to watch everyone- men, women, girls, and boys- congregate. It is the only place where both females and males can come together on an equal “playing field” (no pun intended).