Last Full Week!?

Monday was a good start to the week. I went out to a site called Daphilus, which was demoed by HODR a few weeks ago and then became a regular rubble site. The volunteer leading the team, Jen, had been asking me to come out to the site for a while so I did. It’s in a pretty secluded area but not secluded enough for there not to be any kids. Now I typically like the kids but the one’s on this site were, frankly, annoying. They would continuously come onto the slab despite our constantly telling them not to. Some of them were even shouting some pretty naughty things (i.e. “fuck you bitch give me one dollar”). So despite the disruption we managed to move a lot of rubble and got pretty close to finishing. The Bobcat came out in the morning and was taking the rubble from our pile and making a road with it. It’s pretty neat working in tandem with the machinery. I also must mention that yesterday was BRUTALLY hot. Like possibly the hottest day I’ve experienced since I’ve been here.

So I made it through yesterday and woke up today, as usual, to the sounds of people eating breakfast. There are lots of rows of bunks and mine is the one right next to the tables. I’ve been waking up a bit later recently (closer to 6) so there are typically a fair amount of people up by then and I get to wake up to people sitting right next to my bed. In the morning I went out to Daphilus again to finish it up. There was just a little rubble left and then we scraped the slab clean. We finished around 10 so had a little while where we just sat around, which is always nice. In the afternoon I went back to the school rubble site I’ve been working on. I did a bit of sledging and then worked on rebar. As a general rule, I hate doing rebar. But today I did it with someone called Ben and it wasn’t so bad.

Something that is really neat about HODR is the diverse people it attracts. I work with and am friends with people from all over – Scotland to Ghana, Australia to Hong Kong, Canada to England, South Africa to Slovakia – the list goes on and on. It’s so cool sitting at lunch or wheel barrowing with so many people from so many different places. People also do so many different things back at home – investment banker to fireman, housewife to taxidermist, nurse to student, etc. Brining all these people together and putting them in one building creates a really interesting living environment.

Tomorrow it’s back to the school. I’m praying for some clouds or a breeze or something, anything.

Love,

Daniel