Day One

I was so exhausted after Day One, I thought I'd blog before bed, but what I did was go to bed before bed instead. 8.30 pm. Don't judge me. I had a headache.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Getting to the work site is always exciting, seeing for the first time what has been done and what remains. I've been training for the heavy lifting on this build using weights which mimic the weight of cinder blocks, so I was kind of amused to see that all the cinder block work is complete. What remained was the erection of pre-constructed walls and trusses, putting up roofs and siding, and painting. If I can lift cinder blocks, I can lift a paintbrush. Is my guess.

The second exciting thing at the work site is meeting your crew for the first time. I already knew my friend Scott Lyle was on my crew, and I'd met Irv, the 85-year-old man who lets President Carter call him Irwin "because he's my elder." When we arrived, we discovered that half of the crew was Irv-related - daughter Cindy, new son-in-law Rico (this trip was their wedding present), a granddaughter, Nicky, and friend Diana. Scott, myself, and a Bruins fan named Matt balanced out the crew, and our House Leader was the famous Vic Fasolino. Vic is famous for other Habitat accomplishments, but I know him as the guy who met his wife on a Habitat Global Village trip and married her on the roof of a build in Detroit. Laura, his bride, is our block leader. It's very cute, actually.

It wouldn't be so cute, except that our crew is the furthest ahead of the whole build site. I told Scott I'd never been on a crew so far ahead, and that I was starting to think it was me. He just looked at me, confirming that it probably still is me. I have to say, of every build I've done, this is the one on which I'm probably the least useless.

GROUND CREW

Matt and Nicky (drinking her water!)

Because we started on ladders and scaffolding, and I climb neither because of low blood pressure, I have established myself as Ground Crew. I spot problems and hand things up and run and get Vic when needed. "What happened to Safety Monitor?" Well, Laura acts as Safety Monitor for the site, and our crew (being mostly related to each other) does a great job of looking after each other - suggesting breaks and water and electrolytes to each other with no input from me. It's pretty cool, and very productive. We lost Diana to Bus #7 (which was left running with the A/C on to act as this build's 'cooling tent') for a good portion of the day, due to her low blood pressure. It was a great way to gauge how much my training had paid off for this build - I only had a couple of head-rushes, but no real dizziness, despite mid-90 temperatures and high humidity. Our goal as a crew was to get the trusses up on both houses. My goal was to stay out of the Med Tent (which is actually one of the completed prototype houses).

Scott, Nicky, and House Leader Vic

Scott, Matt and Nicky were the heroes of the day, with the rest of us acting as support staff. One incident sticks in my head, though - I was asked to mark the trusses for the placement of the purlins with Diana. Using my Buffalo Sabres tape measure, of course. So we started marking trusses that were on the ground behind one of our houses, and the House Leader from the house behind us came over and started bossing us. Why were we doing it that way? Why didn't we just measure from the top and then mark every 70 centimetres? I finally turned to her and said, "We're just going to do it our way, OK?", since the measurements we had been given were very specific and were actually 69.9 centimetres apart. Then it turned out that we were supposed to be marking the trusses behind our other house, because we were sharing supplies back-to-back with another crew, and not one pile to each crew. She came up to Vic all snarky and said, "What, are you just sending crews around to randomly mark other crews' trusses?" Yes, ma'am, that's exactly what we're doing. What a bitch. She looked right at me and said she was going to mark them. "I figured you would, since you didn't like the way we were doing it." I can be snarky, too, but at least I smiled. Which is good, because I found out later that she's actually in my tent.

M. Albérique, House 220

KRÉYOL AND FRENCH... AND SPANISH

The language thing came up. Diana, who used to be on some international Habitat board, speaks fluent French and Spanish. When our first homeowner showed up, she reeled off a greeting in French to him. Yeah, he doesn't speak French, only Creole (and Spanish, we found out later). She scoffed at this, but it was the equivalent of us listening to our Irish hosts at full speed and trying to figure out the American equivalent. So I was able to communicate with him in my limited Creole, and the rest was miming with the crew. Our other homeowner spoke limited English and French, so she made Diana happy. I got to speak both, so I was feeling all multilingual.

MY DONORS, IMMORTALISED

One project I accomplished on my own yesterday was a fundraiser project. Everyone who donated $100 or more was to have their name written on a block and a photo taken of it in the house. Because the block work was already completed, I was going to write names on top of the finished concrete which would then be covered by installation of the walls. Vic though it would be neat to write them on the walls where it could be seen by the homeowner. I was able to communicate the project to our Creole homeowner, and he did not think it would be so neat to have Sharpied walls in his new home. Glad we could ask. He did help me with the project, clearing up the concrete a bit for me to write on, and he read all the names with me. Thanks again to my fabulous donors!

Almost to the build site for Day Two, so I'm signing off. Went to bed early last night with a headache, and so grateful that was enough to take care of it and I'm ready for the day!