It seemed like my tent went on forever, because I kept meeting people on the bus or the build site all week who were in it, like Allison the Canadian. (Remember the woman who yelled at me the first day who turned out to be in my tent? On the third day, she saw me at the build and smiled and said hello, and then asked which houses were mine. She never recognized me as the truss screw-up!)
Despite the fact that the tent seemed to be infinite, there was actually very little space between cots — about 10 inches. This time, when I woke up at 1.00 a.m. and couldn’t sleep, I was grateful that the party was still going on and that, with a 2.30 a.m. wake-up call, no one was planning on going to bed at all tonight. My cot-neighbour Deb was at that party, and that gave me TWENTY inches of space to manoeuvre in once I moved her cot over. I’d packed earlier, of course, and — after one last frozen shower — was already wearing what I planned to wear for the flight to Atlanta, but there was the matter of actually removing my giant bags from underneath the cot once and for all in the morning.
After that shower, I ran into Jeff Carter and Matt on a Hot Tin Roof at the bar, and we all sat up front together for the Closing Ceremonies. The ceremonies were shorter than usual, with just our own talent and no outside entertainment. One tradition in the closing ceremonies is the announcement of the location of the next year’s build and the passing of the shovel from the head of local Habitat to the head of Habitat at next year’s location. The JRCWP is returning to Haiti next year, so we even skipped that part. The highlight is always the slideshow of the build, with photos and videos that elicit applause from the friends of whomever is shown in the moment. I hope that one of those photo-every-hour progress videos gets posted at some point. Watching the slideshow makes me feel as though Day One was a month ago; I’d be interested to see the month-long week compressed into five minutes.
We were at the bar (surprise!) when the first announcement came: they’d decided they didn’t want to wait until 11.00 p.m. to give us all our passports back, so we needed to go get them now (as part of our special tour through Customs and Immigration, we handed over our passports on the trip down to be held by Habitat, contrary to everything they’ve ever told you about travelling abroad). I made one side trip to my tent to grab everything I was leaving for donations (tools, clothes, Sue Campbell’s work boots), and rushed to the meal tent to get my passport. By the time I got there, only ten remained — apparently I wasn’t the only one made anxious by the distance between myself and my passport.
We said our goodnights (and our goodbyes to the people on Flight 2, whose paths we would not cross in the morning), and I tried to be a good girl and go to bed at 11.00 p.m. I’d hit a wall. I figured I could sleep. Because I can’t get me enough Haiti, I was up two hours later, wide awake. So, I moved Deb’s cot a bit, reassembled my luggage one last time, and left behind gifts for the Irish (a lovely light/fan combination, inflatable mattress pad, and the balance of a bottle of Bacardi Gold were sacrificed to our lovely and generous hosts).
Of course, Matt and the other regular insomniacs were at the meal tent getting coffee already, and we just stayed up until it was time to get our shit together. We were supposed to be boarding buses at 3.00 a.m. for our 7.00 a.m. flight, even though my tent once again showed little signs of life when I wanted them to be awake and chatty at 3. Matt and I continued our meal tent conversation at the campsite gate, which would unlock and slide open momentarily so that we could board the buses. First in line meant we would be in the back of the first bus — we had no idea for how long.
We got to the airport fairly quickly, fortunately not before it was light enough to see what was in our weird-sandwich-of-the day – eggs, some cheese product, and onions because we didn’t smell bad enough already (bringing enough gum for everyone made me a hero). But then we waited. For a long, long, long time and for no discernable reason. Through the magic of technology, I had a lively half-hour text conversation with my friend Karen Haycox on another bus about, well, waiting. This is when I really got my whining on…
“I was hoping they wouldn’t make us get off the bus right away, You never get good waiting in, back in the States.”
“With the exchange rate, you get so much more waiting for your money here.”
“We didn’t bring a lot of waiting down with us, wasn’t sure it would last a week – good thing they had so much here already!”
“They should think about packaging it and exporting it – places like NYC need a little more waiting. That NYC minute is so short it’s sad.”
“If we get into the airport, I’m grabbing some at Duty Free.”
“Apparently there’s a time difference of which we were not aware…”
“I’ve just been informed the International Date Line is in Group 2.”
“Our agent sucks.”
“And this getting paid in Nature Valley Granola Bars isn’t as good a deal as it sounded.”
“Next time I’m asking for TWO entrees, and for lunch I’d like them to stop telling us what’s in the sandwiches and make us guess. The Pepsi-only clause was also a mistake.” (and it really, really was…)
“I picked the right week to really pick up my drinking. Next week I’m going to try sitting down some and sleeping, see how that goes.”
“A few more minutes, we’re going rogue. Going to start smoking so they kick us off the bus.”
“ ‘We’re looking for 7 volunteers to act as customs officials… 7 volunteers, please come to the front of the bus!’ “
(think Garth Brooks here…) “Ooooh, I’ve got friends on coach buses, who can hammer nails and lift trusses, on other days, but on the bus we stay…”
If you know us, you know who said what.
We were the only people at the airport, but things still did no go smoothly. Our flight was even delayed an hour, which I don’t understand, but I don’t know how (a) charter flights, and (b) Haiti work. I was in the last row again, this time on the right side. God put me in an awesome tent and on a great build site, so it’s only right that the up-front seats should be reserved for someone else who wasn’t as lucky all week long.
Of course, somehow travel arrangements worked out so that Sue’s car was waiting for me at the Atlanta airport — we have a tradition along those lines, where Sue is always flying out when I’m coming in, so she just texts me where she parks and leaves the key in an undisclosed location. Part of that tradition is my filling the tank in her car because then I'll drive it around a lot. Sue's sister Chris is actually the one who left it at the airport when she flew home that morning, and she forgot to put gas in it. Entirely. I filled it up at the gas station closest to the airport — less than a mile away — and put 21.926 gallons into a tank that holds 22 gallons. That's my new record. And a sign that when you do good in the world, God will push your car to the gas station for you.
Of course, then Sue and I went for 2-hour massages. Isaac showed a particular affinity for a certain body part – no matter what he was massaging, his hands always seemed to end up on… well, we call him Isaac the Ass-Man now. I felt like tipping him was superfluous.
Finally got my Haitian rum (the Duty Free cart at the airport wasn’t open at 6.30 a.m.), at the liquor store next to Massage Heights in Sandy Springs. Drank some with Diet Coke-not-Pepsi with our all-Greek dinner. Watched just enough of the Sabres-Bruins game to see Lucic’s nasty run on Miller, and hit the wall at 9.00 p.m. I couldn’t even stay awake for the rest of the game. I couldn’t even stay awake long enough to switch my laundry to the dryer – the Home of Wayward Women did that for me. I slept like a rock until 4, grateful to be in a beautiful home and a comfy bed, but wondering who was going to hang out with me at the meal tent now.
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