Habitat homeowner Jaime Moraga.

The Future Starts Now
Habitat families in southern Chile look to tomorrow

By Shala Carlson

The fastest growing city in Chile, Temuco sits among the rolling green hills of the south country. Empty fields are technicolored with wildflowers; the climate here is cool and temperate. Land in the city itself is increasingly hard to acquire, so Habitat Temuco works more and more in the smaller communities that surround it.

In the small community of Almagro, just across the slow-flowing Cautin River from Temuco, Marilyn Parna disappears inside her Habitat house for a quick minute, re-emerging with a bowl of sweet strawberries. She grew them herself in her backyard, in a plot carefully divided into rows of tomatoes, aji chile peppers, cilantro, beans, potatoes and more. She says she started the garden almost at the same time she started the house — which itself represented new growth.

Parna represents the beginning of Habitat’s work in southern Chile. The mother of three had heard about Habitat house building in the north and knew a member of the national organization. Four years ago, she approached her acquaintance and said, “Why not expand?”

At the time, the Parna family was living in what she calls an “emergency house,” a tiny one-room structure they occupied because they had nowhere else to go. She, her husband Alvaro and their three children lived in the small space with no kitchen and no bathroom. Their Habitat house means a 100 percent increase in their quality of life, she says.

Son Alvaro, 21 years old now, helped work on the family’s Habitat house, which spawned an interest in construction that continues to this day. He lives in Santiago and works at a construction materials outlet. Today, he is cleaning his mother’s chimney and says that he hopes to build more Habitat houses in the south of Chile some day.

In another small town outside Temuco, this one called Nueva Imperial, Jaime Moraga stands inside his almost-completed Habitat house, one of the area’s newest homeowners. He pulls out his cellphone to proudly display photos of his house during its early days of construction. Preparing the site, he laughs, felt like he was digging all the way to China.

A mechanic by trade, Moraga has lived and worked in nearly the same space for the past three years. He and his wife Gladys, and their 7-year-old son Michael, have shared two small rooms just off the shop where Jaime repairs cars of all makes and models. (Proof of Jaime’s international interests? His dog Ford leaves behind a tasty bone for an approving pat on the head from his master when he answers to his American-car-inspired name.)

The living space just off Jaime’s shop is tight, and the family goes outside, often in the rain and cold, to take care of necessities. But there is room for the fish and the turtle that Michael asked for, and the walls are covered with baby pictures. Jaime shows them off one by one, saving one photo for last; that one, he reveals with all the flourish of a showman, is of him, not of his son.

While small, the new house, he says, will mean more space, more light and indoor facilities. “It’s all for Michael,” Jaime says.

In the pastoral hills of southern Chile, these two families represent two futures: one that is already under way, one that is just about to begin. Aracelly Parna swings and plays in the front yard of her Habitat house; looking forward to moving into his own Habitat house, Jaime Moraga spends a sunny afternoon working on the engines that power his family’s tomorrows.