An eight-month wait to see his family again was coming to an end and Martin Alvarez Avalos couldn’t stand still.

The walls are bare, without decorations or clocks to track the time that produced no money for Martin Alvarez Avalos today.

Ramon Alvarez Avalos is knee-deep in a ditch, installing pipe at a construction site in Bedford County.

The gamble: Leave behind your wife and children each spring to travel three days by bus for eight months of heavy labor. The payoff: Earn just over eight bucks or so an hour, with much of it sent back to family.