A fine whistling from the water. Humberto was on his way to work. The girls guessed that he was in his mid forties. He's seventy three. He spent the entire morning make a frame filled with bamboo to serve as a door for a cabin to be occupied by a volunteer that was to arrive. With a chop saw the job would have taken at most half an hour. Hand sawn miters, no miter box, lot's of cuts. Hand saw the bamboo. Cut, measure the next piece and cut again.
As it was a rainy day the other workers would not be coming. On these days they occupy themselves gouging bowls and plates out of wood. The volunteers then smooth them out with a power sander/grinding tool. Alicia and Amanda finished off dozens of plates and bowls. These dishes are to be used here instead of ceramic dishes that get chipped or break.
Working in the rain Karl, Sam and Rain dug yucca, a starchy root for dinner.
Karl and Sam then sat down and scraped labels off of liquor bottles, taking them from a pile of a thousand which will be used for a purpose I don't think I'm currently allowed to disclose, let's just say it's a construction project.
Lizzie, Dan's girl friend made bean chili in the kitchen while Dan and I improvised a Hawaiian sling, a type of spear gun, out of surgical tubing, bamboo, a hose clamp, some cable ties and a hanger. It looks cooler than it sounds and works well.
Lunch black bean, lime, garlic chili, rice, plantains.
Time to move a bed from a facility over the water to a lodging known as MarguayRita, named after a Marguay wildcat that Michelle formerly owned. The cat still prowls the island with its kitten. Great, the bed was built in the room, no way it could be moved out of the room without taking it apart. It had been constructed with a large number of large nails, requiring large pry bars to get the thing apart.
Sierra, a 24 year old female volunteer joined us.
Lizzie made dinner of Yucca with lots of onion and garlic, home baked bread oil with garlic and
oil. Nothing but white carbs in site. This is not something a guy with blood sugar problems needs to be feasting on. Actually this isn't a good diet for anyone, it's seriously deficient in so many elements of nutrition it's beyond description.
We all told of ourselves and our history. At one point in my story I said, “At this time I was 25.” The look on their faces was precious. I had covered working at a hardware store, managing the store, home handyman, construction work, locksmith, repo man, architectural hardware consultant, head of deposit operations for a major Detroit Bank, software developer in Florida, programmer in Texas and had just reached the point where I was head of data processing for the international banking department for the seventeenth largest bank in the country. I told them a lot of stuff I'd never blog.
I went on to talk about my marriage to a girl I met in London, my kids, Karl (in attendance) and Mark, divorce, kids moving in with me, I skipped a couple of jobs, started my own consulting firm, kids moved out, sold all my shit and hit the road.
Someone said “Who wants to follow that story? Jesus, 'I'm nineteen, I went to high school and then went on this trip just doesn't work after that tale.” We were bonding.
No comments:
Post a Comment