Captain Me

Sunday was a pretty typical day off. I spent most of the day doing nothing of real importance. I took a walk around Leogane in an attempt to find a sim card for my phone. I didn’t buy one but I now know where I can buy one. I should have known you couldn’t buy a sim card after 1 p.m. on a Sunday, right? It was nice just walking around town a bit – it gave me a chance to take some pictures, which I often don’t do enough during the week. I also went to the hot Sunday restaurant – Massaje - and got a chicken burger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake! The rest of the day was nice, as Sunday’s are. It rained unbelievably hard last night and my bed got wet.

Today was a pretty epic day for me. We had our usual Monday morning pancake breakfast-meeting. I was really excited to get back on rubble after being off of it for so long so I planned to sign up with the team leader I usually work with. By the time I got to the board the site was already full. I went to ask the team leader, Ton, if I could join anyways and he pretty much just grabbed my name magnet and put my name on the board for a new rubble site in the team leader position. Being a team leader was something I didn’t think I’d do for several more weeks but now works too, I guess. So being team leader I had to pick up a cell phone to keep on me at the site. I also had to go to the tool shed and coordinate all the tools and wheelbarrows we were going to take (which was tough since I hadn’t been to the site before). The team also has to take water and a first-aid kit. But I wasn’t planning to be team leader so remembering all this stuff made for a kind of stressful morning. Each tap-tap makes two runs to different sites in the morning and my team was scheduled to be second so we were requested next door at the hospital where we moved a big triage structure. After that we headed out to the site (about 12 of us, including a few local volunteers). When we got to the site it was just a whole bunch of rubble – usually there are huge slabs of concrete that need to be sledged, but in this case all the structure was totally in pieces. This meant there was a lot of shoveling, pick-axing, and wheel barrowing going on. There was also this one piece of solid concrete that proved to be a real challenge – it was leaning up against a neighbor’s wall so every time we hit the piece, we risked breaking the wall, not to mention there was the danger of somebody getting hurt if we weren’t careful. I decided I would consult with someone at lunch and we’d take care of that problem in the afternoon. One of the other jobs of team leaders is to make decisions on what people do work-wise and all the questions about pretty much everything on site came to me. Despite my being nervous and the rain we got, the morning went really well. Lots of stuff got taken care of. And the neighbors all wanted to keep the rubble to use to elevate areas from flooding. One other real concern I had were all the kids around. This site was in a pretty confined area and there were literally a couple dozen kids so I was constantly having to ask them to back away for their own safety and so that we could work. Being team leader all these things fall on me so even though all the volunteers are responsible adults, there is a fair amount of responsibility (and pressure) on the team leader, I learned to appreciate today.

Lunch/afternoon break was really interesting today. I saw some people with badges milling around while I was eating and was told they were Acupuncturists Without Borders. They had come from their base in Port-au-Prince and did a session with us! So everyone who wanted to went to the big outdoor tent, sat down, and got ten needles, five in each ear! I’m not sure how much of it was the needles and how much of it was the fact that I was closing my eyes and taking deep breaths, but the whole thing felt really great and was totally relaxing. When this was done I had to go get all the equipment ready for the afternoon.

The team returned to the site in the afternoon and we basically kicked ass. Everyone worked so hard clearing the slab and doing what needed to be done. I worked with a couple of the guys taking the wall down – which got done safely with very little damage done to the neighbor’s wall. We got rained on once again in the afternoon, which was pretty refreshing. Our ride arrived and the team all got back, everyone and everything still intact, so I feel like I didn’t completely fail as a leader. Thinking about it, it’s also a bit weird being team leader but also being younger than everyone I’m leading. It’s not an issue or something anyone brings up (or even thinks about, probably) but it’s been on my mind. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before but here’s an interesting fact – I’m the youngest person on base. But anyways, I’ll be leading the team again tomorrow and plan to finish the site in the morning. Then I’ll be off to a new rubble site and a new adventure.

I’m so tired.

Love,

Daniel