Typical Day

Typical Day

The last two days have been what I will call typical days.  I got up around six thirty.  Got dressed, bathroom, brush teeth, wash face go to breakfast.  Breakfast is usually scrambled eggs in omelet form of some sort, occasionally pancakes, or as today was, French toast, juice, fruit … haven’t had any of the fruit as I’m not real sure what kind it is…and maybe some mystery sausage…a little overcooked.

After breakfast at seven thirty everyone on base congregates under the trees for a devotional.  There are some wooden benches and a few concrete planters with benches around them for people to sit on.  Four, sometimes five ladies usually line up in front of the ‘congregation’ of forty or so, make introductions to God, a prayer and then lead a song, all in Creole with an interpreter making the speaking parts legible in English, if you are close enough to hear him.  It is interesting that when the ladies sing, I hear mostly ladies voices during the songs.  This morning was the first time they weren’t there and four men workers sheepishly started the music.  I was amazed how quickly and loudly the men joined in.  They actually sounded real good, strong deep male voices, with only a few women.  Strange that they don’t sound so loud with the women leading; they are actually quite good.

A different Haitian gives a short message with an interpreter each morning.  This morning a local pastor talked about the folks who leave their families to come to places like Haiti to give of themselves to someone else.  I’m not sure where it went from there as it was hard to hear…but I heard the first part … they appreciate us being here.

Devotions is over at eight then the rubble team meets over at the shipping containers where the trucks are to find out our assignments for the day.  Each day is different and each operator generally has one or two nationals assigned to him. One is for interpreting, the other is for assisting in any way.  Today I had Jean and Jules helping me move stuff around in the yard with the bobcat – it had fork attachments on it.  We were getting all the wood, pipe, and other stuff relocated to make room for granular material for the mound style septic system they are putting in.  Worked on that most of the day; move skids of wood across lot and put in yard; move skids of pipe across base; move out houses; move shipping containers across lot; move this, move that.  The guys really helped pick stuff up, odds and ends, garbage rocks and other stuff.  It looks pretty good now that it is tidy and ordered.

After working with the lot I relocated to the other side of the wall where the base extension is taking place.  Yesterday we started installing a perimeter drain and septic base for the tanks.  Francois, our new operator from Quebec, is quite adept at running the large excavator so he worked on the rather overkill perimeter ditch while I moved the material out of his way with the large front end loader.  We spent all day working that as the plans changed minute by minute and everyone was kind of breaking in to working with other people.  But in the long run it worked out pretty good. 

So, today, I did some rough grading with the bobcat on that site trying to fill in low spots and build up others.  It was my first time on this piece of equipment, and after change the forks over for the bucket it was like starting the first day all over again even though it was after three in the afternoon.  I managed but didn’t have anything to show off in the shadow of Francois.  But he was encouraging and I’m sure tomorrow will supply more practice as the project has a long way to go.

At five I came back to the tent, changed clothes and got a cool shower, redressed and went to dinner.  Tonight was our favorite overcooked mystery meat, dry as usual with a bone, mystery vegetable – looked like a tater but wasn’t … still don’t know – a real tater wrapped in foil, mystery juice…but good… Kenny had a birthday and someone made him a cake which was good…mystery vegetables in casserole form, and salad. 

Overall, both days were sweaty, tiring and felt productive.  It feels good to work.