19th Annual National Service-Learning Conference Attendees Get Hands Dirty

It was a windy Wednesday morning in
the Bernalillo district of Albuquerque, N.M., where 60 attendees of the 18th Annual National
Service-Learning Conference from across the nation waited to go outside and
get dirty. The pre-conference service-learning project volunteers were told
they would be building adobe bricks, but nobody was really prepared for the
labor, fun, and delicious food that would be involved.

Before
beginning the day’s work, government officials welcomed and thanked the group on
behalf of the New Mexico Service-Learning Commission. Then employees of
Cornerstones Community Partners and a local construction company provided a
tour of the site, which housed buildings and churches under renovation.

According the project lead, adobe
is the ideal building material for New
Mexico because it provides great insulation by
absorbing the sun’s heat during the winter and keeps the rooms inside cool
during the summer. Most importantly, adobe absorbs water slowly, making adobe
walls more weatherproof than houses built with cement foundations. Cement causes
water to accumulate and create large cracks in the walls.

Making
adobe bricks sounds easy — take some mud, shape it into a block, and let it dry.
The process is more complicated, however. The mud is actually a combination of
straw, sand, dirt, and water shoveled into a cement mixer. The resulting
mixture is carried to a flat, open area in wheelbarrows where the bricks are
laid by pouring and packing the mud into wet wooden frames. Finally, the frames
are pulled off, resulting in two adobe bricks that dry in the sun for about two
weeks and are used to replace cracked and worn bricks in the buildings on the
site. Repeat this process 150 times and you get 300 adobe bricks, each weighing
approximately 30 pounds, made by 60 volunteers in only three hours.

The volunteers also used the mud
mixture to plaster a wall of one of the buildings on site. This semiannual
plastering is the only maintenance required for adobe buildings, which allows
them to remain in good condition for hundreds of years.

After a long
morning of working, the mud-covered volunteers were treated to a grand New Mexican
buffet including Frito pies, chicken taquitos, and cinnamon pudding. David
Eisner, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, spoke and
left us with us a thought that captures the heart of service-learning: “Tell me,
and I’ll forget. Show me, and I’ll remember. Engage me, and I’ll understand.”