Working Teams

I finally was able to go out with the work teams. After a month of listening to their stories of work accomplished and the wonderful people they met I was beginning to get a little jealous. But on my last day in camp I got to go out and get dirty! There are many jobs that are vital to the total effort and I have chronicled them in an earlier entry (A Day at Camp), but today I was on the pointy end of the arrow.

I visited a couple of other sites before I headed to my job. The teams were rightfully proud of their work and wanted me to see what they had accomplished. After Katrina, the house below was about as messed up as it could be and still stand. There was much discussion about whether it was salvagible or should just be scraped. Obviously, the decision was made to save it. Just about everything was ripped out - down to the bare studs and pipes. Much of the floor had to be replaced. This is the kitchen.




Of course before one can even get to the stage of looking through a gutted house, someone needs to "muck it out." That is the team I was assigned too. (I guess that shows what they think of my great construction skills.) The house we were assigned only had damage through the leaking roof. The flood surge had not made it this far. Nonetheless, we had to remove all the ceiling tile in two bedrooms and the kitchen, and the walls boards in one bedroom.














Of course not every job is a glamorous as mucking out. As you can imagine, mold is a problem and must be addressed in a multi-step treatment. One never knows what the assignment will be on a given day.





In D'Iberville much of the work is construction work - hanging dry wall, plumbing, electrical and finish work...
















...but there is plenty of work for those who don't know a mitre box from a junction box. Walls must be prepared for painting. This woman specialized in spackling and taping.

And this woman became an expert in spackling corners.

And, of course there is plenty of wall and trim to be painted.

At the end of the day there are hugs all round. The universal constant is that families cannot express enough their gratitude for the ongoing work that volunteers are doing. The volunteers, for their part, feel privilaged that they have been able to make a tangible diference in someone's life. Not uncommon is the sentiment of one volunteer who at the end of his week exclaimed as we were leaving the work site, "This has been fun! I'm coming back."







After leaving my work site, we went back to check on the house that we visited in the morning. We found the homeowner standing on the kitchen floor that didn't exist that morning, discussing possible layouts for cabinets and appliances.





The total project on any house may take weeks or months to finish. Each team contributes its little part. A touching example of this was the volunteer, painting the walls of a home nearing completion, who discovered that her husband had been part of the team that first mucked out that same home back in November.

iXs,
the Rev