"I Would Never Have Had a Home"
By Alfredo Keihnle

A meager income left Ana Regina Cifuentes with little hope of owning a home.


Before owning a Habitat house, Ana Regina Cifuentes and her two children had to live with her parents in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. “Home” for the extended family was confined within the adobe walls of a 9-square-meter house.

A drugstore vendor, Ana Regina works while her children, Fernando, 17, and Ana Isabel, 10, go to school. With only a meager income, hope for a home of her own was slim. “If it wouldn’t have been for God’s grace and Habitat’s help I would never have had a home,” she says.

But since 1999, she has owned a Habitat house in a village called San Juan Ostuncalco. She worked hard to pay the monthly payment but it was a struggle. Then, her aunt died and left Ana Regina enough money to pay off her mortgage. In March 2000, she paid off her house believing that in this way she would help benefit other families in need of housing.

“Habitat really helps people in need like myself,” she says. “I am very thankful.”


Snapshot
Ana Regina Cifuentes, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
House description: The four-room house is 49 square meters and is made of block walls and cement floor with a tin-sheet roof.
Moved in: 1999
Total amount of mortgage: $1,500
Monthly payment: $16
Paid off in: 2000


Alfredo Keihnle is donor relations coordinator for Habitat for Humanity Guatemala.


Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, April/May 2001.
This article may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
©2001 Habitat for Humanity International