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Hard Labour in the hot sun3rd May 2007 My hands are pasty, white and as soft as a baby's bum. When people talk about people never doing a hard day's work in the life, they're talking about me. Well, up until now anway. My main reason in coming to Romblon was to check things out. See what the volunteer projects are and whether I could live here for two years*. While I was here though, I figure I may as well help out with a project anway. That project turned out to be to put a new roof on the daycare center in the barangay (village) of Carmen. Here are before and after pictures. Hmmm. I think the before one looks better. But, it you zoom in a bit on the before shot, you'll see numerous holes in a sunburnt and sea-bleached roof. Certainly no place for the youth of tomorrow to be learning. Lorelei, Eden and I were the main labourers. We had a local guy called Marlon working for us who knew all the technical details of working with a roof. Eden sourced some nepa panels that would form the new roof. We removed the old panels and replaced them with new ones. We attached them using this rather extravagent knot. We started using a bamboo-like vine for the knots, but it proved too brittle and we changed to fishing wire. It was yard yakka putting the roof on. It was super hot and I think we cleaned Carmen out of Gatorade. At some points I sat down for what I thought would be five minutes and ending up not moving for half-an-hour. This caused other people to sit down and the cycle would perpertuate. While the work was hard, I am very glad I did it. My hands went from pasty, white and soft to pasty, white and slightly coarse. * The short answer to that question is "No". More on this later.
(c)
2005, 2006 and 2007 Malcolm Trevena. |
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