Friday, September 25, 2009

Habitat For Humanity: Day 2

(PICTURE: The heaviest load Marla had to wheelbarrow.)

I woke up on the second morning feeling pain in approximately 29 different places. The most irritating place though was the heat rash that I had on my right bicep. I showed Katie, the designated medic from my group, the rash and she brought me over to see Marilyn, the medic from the other group/real life nurse. Marilyn bandaged up my bicep and I was good to go...despite being mocked by a few people for having inadvertently shown off my totally awesome bicep.

There was a lot to be done on the second day:
- Removing the wood planks from the foundation.

(PICTURE: Me doing basically nothing as Katie crow-barred the hell out of the wood planks. My sleeve is rolled up because Marla, a Harvard graduate from both undergrad and business school, told me that it would help my irritation. She said it was the way girl lacrosse players wear their uniforms. You can't argue with that.)

- Building columns...which meant more cement making.
(PICTURE: Ian and Sheila were doing 99.9% of the lifting on this one.)

- Bending rebar. Don't feel bad if you don't know what rebar is. I had no clue prior to this build. Click on the link to read about it. Basically it is the meal put inside columns to help strengthen the columns.

- Removing nails from wood.

- Sanding wood.

- Filling in the foundation with dirt.

- Pounding the dirt to make the foundation stronger.

(PICTURE: A dirt pounding tool.)

- Putting up scaffolding.

(PICTURE: The end of Day 2. Progress is being made!)

The one problem with the build was that we were building during rainy season. It rained for a little while on the first day and then just down-poured on the second day. Here's a little video of the rain coming down on the family's old house as well as some shots of our site: