American Highway allows KNLS listeners to travel America's back roads, highways, and byways.  You'll find some of this nation's most interesting people, places and events in these stories.

Global Village & Museum At Habitat For Humanity Headquarters in Americas, Georgia

Travel state highway 280 through southwestern Georgia and you can visit the headquarters of one of the world’s most highly respected institutions, Habitat For Humanity.

In 2001 the well-known American ministry Habitat for Humanity, located in tiny Americas, Georgia, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. During that first quarter century of service Habitat volunteers in 85 countries managed to construct 100,000 homes for the poor. At the anniversary celebration ministry officials announced an ambitious goal to build another 100,000 homes within five years. At Habitat headquarters in Americas they’ve launched a new project that ministry director’s hope will help them reach that goal.

About twenty young people are bustling around a run down warehouse on an overgrown lot just a few blocks from Habitat for Humanity headquarters. The team of volunteers, all from Jacksonville, Florida, will spend the next two weeks making mud bricks with nothing more than hand tools.

Team leader Danny Locke explains the process saying, "We’ve got Leslie here, that’s sifting the clay, which I just learned, and you take the sifted clay and dump it out here on the ground and mix it with concrete. Here is the mixture of concrete; blending it all together with rakes, and then they’re sprinkling it down with some water, putting it in molds, and then actually pressing the blocks. They told us today that two people could do an entire house-worth of blocks in two weeks. It’s interesting."

The bricks will be used in the construction of about four dozen homes to be built on this empty lot as part of a Habitat For Humanity project called The Global Village and Museum. Ministry founder Millard Fuller says the reconstruction will help visitors to Habitat headquarters better understand the worldwide need for safe, affordable housing.

"This will be, in effect, a little microcosm of the world. We will have slum areas reproduced; houses like people are living in in miserable conditions. And then about 45 houses, exact replicas of the kinds of houses we’re building in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, India, other Asian countries, Europe," Fuller explains.

Longtime Habitat spokesman, former American President Jimmy Carter explained during ground breaking ceremonies that the Global Village would allow the average American just a taste of life in the developing world without ever leaving the country.

Carter said, "I think most of the people in this country who look at Habitat for Humanity with great admiration and a sense of wonder at its contribution will now have a chance to see personally what housing was like, and also what Habitat has contributed to give those people a better sense of what a dwelling should be. So I think it will be a great educational program for the tens of thousands of new visitors who will come to Americus to see this particular sight."

Habitat has made a science of matching the kind of home built in each country to local conditions and materials. Construction supervisor Wayne Nelson catalogues the types of construction that will be on display at the Global Village saying, "Some of them will be as we build in Papau, New Guinea – wood frame structure that’s raised on poles off the ground. Most of the world lives in masonry structures, and there’ll be a variety, from adobe bricks that we would build with that wouldn’t have any cement in them. The compressed earth block is probably the next most expensive method because we use a reduced amount of cement in it from what a concrete block would be. Other homes here will be of concrete block, which is pretty standard as block we build with here in the states. Other structures here will have fired clay brick, and fired clay roof tiles. Some of them will have concrete roof tiles, and others will have metal roofing."

Mr. Nelson goes on to say that visitors to the Habitat Global Village will get a real hands-on experience. In some respects, perhaps a little too real.

"There’ll be some cooking going on; we’ll probably have the solar cooker out there; block making, the sawmill. All those activities. Don’t know if we’ll have a composting toilet like this one that they’ll be able to use, but, we may even get permission for that, if they want to use the toilet like other countries! We’ll have people dressed in costume here, and you’ll hear local language and local sounds as you go through the village, and you’ll learn what life is like for these families. It will be a good opportunity for folks to really just see what Habitat’s work is about in other countries and get involved in it," Nelson says.

As the volunteers from Jacksonville continue to churn out mud bricks, Danny Locke says he thinks the Global Village can only strengthen a renewed interest among Americans in compassionate service, noting "With the tragedy on September 11, I think more Americans are starting to become aware. And me in my personal life, things that used to be a big deal to folks are just not quite a big deal anymore. We’re getting more volunteers. We’re getting a tremendous amount of volunteers now more than we used to that are just wanting to be involved. When you see these homeowners get their keys, and what a blessing it is to them and their family; if it doesn’t do something for you, you need to step back and re-evaluate yourself."

The grand opening for Habitat’s Global Village and Museum is set for early December. For regular updates on the project visit the ministry website at habitat.org.

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