One of Those Days

Did you ever have a day where you tried every which way to get something done but nothing quite turned out right?  Right, that’s today, or at least this afternoon.  

Tonight is Wednesday, the first full day for the Prosser, Washington (above) and Nelson, BC teams here and we’re right in the middle of "The Tent Episode", so to speak.  The tent is a 40ft x 60ft circus tent HAM has here which we’ve dug out from under a few stairs, wiped off the cobwebs and spiders (much to the terror/delight of some helpers...) and which we are in the middle of trying to get erected on the grounds of the Children’s Village property nearby.  You see, tomorrow is the 12th of January, the anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake of 2 years ago.  There is going to be an anniversary memorial service, along with a celebration/dedication service for the new Children’s Village property.  Marc decided it would be great to use the tent and then to leave it up on the property for a while...

After finding it and packing it up in multiple pick-up loads, two of which entailed several teens carrying 15ft heavy steel posts with the other end propped on the rear of the truck a half kilometer or so down the road and over the hill to the property.  The sun was blazing and it was the heat of the afternoon. Once we got the huge plastic tarpaulin tent and the poles to the site, we realized the pins had been sawed off the top of two of them, and one was extra, so haul them back we did (the kids, I drove) to get a new pin welded on top of each, along with 44 new 2ft stakes made and a search done for 500ft of rope to tie down the posts.  

Once everything was in place it was back to the site, in the hot sun (I’m repeating myself here, I think I got too much sun today and three Cokes later is proof indeed!) to stretch out the tarp and figure out how to get the poles erected.  That proved to be quite the adventure.  The main idea was tie down some of the outside posts and then get a group of guys to walk in under the heavy tarp in the sweltering heat and push up the central pole to vertical, before erecting the rest of the outside poles.  It didn’t work, the group inside could hardly raise the pole and tarp 6ft, much less the 15ft to vertical.  After a few other misguided attempts, we thought, well why not attach a rope to the top of the edge center pole with the other end tied to the truck, dig a hole to stabilize the base of the pole and let the truck lift it to vertical.   Hmmm... may work.  It started to but after getting 3/4 to vertical it teetered sideways and came crashing down in a heap.  Also, the tie rope wasn’t really a rope, but a heavy nylon cord which was pulled taut like a piano wire and was groaning mightily during the pull.  After again sizing up the task, we decided to change drivers and retry, this time inserting side poles during the pull to assist in maneuvering the center pole.  Actually it worked, at least for the first of three center posts!  

After three hours we were the tired, dirty but proud bunch that surveyed our work and presented it to Marc who drove up on a motorbike to see what was drawing a crowd of onlookers at the property gate.  He had a quizzical look on his face, and after looking it over exclaimed, “I think the green side is supposed to be up and the white side down.”    Ooops!  

I couldn’t believe it, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted to hear, outside of “it was supposed to be over there...” which fortunately I didn’t hear.  I was about to grumble something about management, then remembered I was part of management, so instead gritted my teeth and said a quick prayer asking the Lord how we were going to resolve this.  As of tonight we kind of left it that if this first third is still standing in the morning we’ll leave it and proceed as is, and if not, flip it and start over, armed now with knowledge and hopefully more men and better ropes.  

A few of us figuratively “hit the wall” this afternoon, which made for a good conversation at tonight’s debriefing and humbled us which is always helpful.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

The rest of the day went very well.  This morning the teams unpacked bins of stuff they had brought for HAM, and then headed out to various worksites to cut and tie rebar, assist with two houses or repair a couple of cement mixers necessary to ongoing construction.  The place was buzzing, Cathy fluttering about assisting, helping and advising small groups working inside and seeming to enjoy every minute, even the odd break trying out a few Creole phrases she especially is picking up, to the delight of the local staff.  I think the teams had a great first day, though impacts have varied widely, mostly dependent on whether they’ve been here before and/or how much sun they got.

About 10:30pm when groups were heading off to bed the lights started flickering ominously, a sure sign the generator was down, and a night watchman came around to fill us in.  It had run out of gas and needed a refill.  I strolled out to help, to find my assistance was needed, as the pump from barrel to tank didn’t seem to work in the dark, and it was a bucket brigade, transferring diesel from 55 gallon drums to 5 gallon buckets from the ground to the top of the tank, then filling by hand through an improvised half an oil can funnel. Let’s just say it worked, and we’ve got a bit of time left tonight before the generator dies for good.  

Did I mention that the whole residence has run out of water, it must be a closed valve somewhere...  like I said, its one of THOSE days!