I guessed that may get you reading...the sin is right at the end of the piece!

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Uruguay is a pretty empty country, for the most part. It’s small, the size of England and Wales. The population is 3.5 million (as compared with over 50 million in England and Wales), one third of whom live in the capital, Montevideo.

Traffic in Northern Uruguay

The north of the country has long been neglected. Huge estancias owned by wealthy absentee Brazilian and Argentine landlords employ local gauchos to look after their livestock. The gauchos are a fiercely independent people. Until recently, they lived in isolated ranchos, run-down shacks with no basic services like running water or electricity.

Walking to School

Forty years ago, an organisation called MEVIR was founded. Its mission was to ‘eradicate insalubrious rural dwellings’ and provide people with a chance to own decent homes. MEVIR is not a charity: it provides materials, design, and technical assistance, and the people themselves build their homes. They then pay in instalments as and when they are able, into a rotating fund which then allows more people to become home-owners.

The houses are built in groups, and extra funding from the government and international organisations goes to provide community centres, training courses for the women, and so on. Villages are born, and people who had lived a lonely existence find themselves part of a community which their have literally constructed with their hands.

The spin-off is enormous: a sense of self-worth and pride is created, and people begin to see ways of supplementing their meagre income, by weaving, keeping a few chickens, or making cheese.

Eggs bring in extra income

Last Friday the remote hamlet of Pueblo Fernandez welcomed hundreds of people from miles around, including busloads of children from four rural schools, for a very special celebration, to open a new community centre and hand keys of newly-built houses to twenty-five families.

Community Centre

Pueblo Fernandez is about as far from the capital as you can get, close to the Brazilian border, and a hundred and fifty kilometres (half on untarred road) from its departmental capital of Salto. The temperature in the early morning had been below freezing, but the sky was clear, and sheltered from the wind by the new community centre, we soon warmed up.

Schoolchildren Celebrate

An eleven-year-old girl made a moving speech: ‘I was born in my granny’s house, far out in the country, and I always lived there with my family. I had to ride an hour to school on my bike. I always dreamed of having a house with a bedroom just for me and my little sister. I took days off school to look after her while my mum and dad were building.’ Her voice wavered as she pointed. ‘And today, after the party, we will go home, to our new house, over there.’ Many a hanky was pulled out to wipe damp eyes. There were more speeches, and traditional dances.

SMS message from a new home owner, pasted up as a poster in the new Community Centre. It reads ‘I’m in the living-room of my house enjoying a delicious maté. We are very happy. It’s an indescribable experience. Thank you for contributing to my joy. A big hug.’

Let me digress a moment here to tell you about Uruguayan cuisine. Especially in the countryside, there is not a huge variety of food on offer. A snack is what my family calls ‘white food’: sweet croissants filled with ham and cheese (yes, sweet), dry bread, biscuits, and ham and cheese sandwiches in plastic-tasting white bread, invariably accompanied by Coca Cola. A ‘real’ meal is an asado: barbecued meat accompanied by Coca Cola. The vegetarian option, if you’re lucky, is overcooked pasta (more white food). Real sophistication might stretch to a salad, which is incredibly dull: chopped lettuce, tomatoes and onion.

Back to Pueblo Fernandez: after three days on the road I had had my fill of white food, (and my husband was getting tired of the ham I kept handing him from my croissants and sandwiches).

Reader, I sinned in Pueblo Fernandez. I sinned. Four cows had been slaughtered for the occasion.

Barbecue Smoke in the Background

The barbecued meat was served by burgundy-waistcoated waiters in huge laundry baskets. And no white food was on offer. I enjoyed every juicy chewy bit of my mountain of fresh Uruguayan beef, and even the Coca Cola tasted like champagne.

Meat, Glorious Meat

To see photos of the MEVIR project, click on the link below. The site is all in Spanish, but click on the first photo and you’ll get all the ‘before’ pictures, the second gives you ‘during’ and the third ‘after’. (and don't worry, I'm back on the wagon. As soon as I got home, I ate about ten portions of fruit and vegetables in my first meal!)

http://www.mevir.com/Galeria_fotografica/galeria_fotografica.html