The Building Has Started!

Well, we’ve started, and what a start it has been. Yesterday and today were the first 2 days of the building for our group and what an incredible start! We arrived to our location, which was a plot of land in a small area just outside of downtown. Habitat (the organization) has been fortunate enough to grow at quite an alarming rate in this area, and their ability to mobilize so many volunteers at once and put them to work has been astounding.

As we arrived yesterday, the Habitat representatives gave us, as well as two other groups that are here, a tutorial on the history of the organtization, the impact they are having on not only this community but many others around North America and of course SAFETY. The morning tutorial was colder than many of the students expected, infact both mornings have been down around 9-11 degrees at the start of the day. Not cold, but drastically different than our day of Swamp Touring and Bourbon Street! We were soon sent down the street, at my surprise and delight, as an entire complete group on one project; the construction of a house from the ground up! The only thing that was done when we arrived was the foundation and some floor trusses. We were soon broken up into a variety of teams on a variety of projects, ranging from the construction of portions of walls, cutting different lengths of wood, unloading delivery trucks, making countless mistakes and as the day moved forward, basking in the eventual afternoon sunlight.

I was really impressed with how the gentleman that was the “Boss” for the job kept everyone pretty much doing something at some time. I was even more impressed with how the students that found themselves without a task, would soon find themselves cheering on one of the others in the team: “Ya, Hammer that nail baby, hammer the life outta that nail” (occasionally other choice words have been inserted...especially when someone hits their thumb with a hammer). They’ve been hilarious, absolutely hilarious throughout the trip, even though we’ve been keeping them quite busy. We get up around 6:00am and grab breakfast in the church. We also have some of them volunteering to work on the “Lunch Chain”, making PB & J brown bag lunches, with snacks and fruit. At the sight by 7:45 for a quick start, and there until 4:00pm.

Yesterday they completed the floor and a majority of the walls. Today we almost completed putting up all the walls of the house as well as most of the plywood type of material on the outside. He (the boss man) thinks we should be able to finish getting the roof on by Friday (I’m sceptical but I love enthusiasm and challenges!).

We had our first verbal group reflection component of the trip last night, and though the students were a little bit slow (some were probably still a little shy) to get started, once the ball was rolling, the response was relentless. They are truly thinking about the big and small picture here. Many of them are vocalizing thoughts of the “impact” and “residual effect” of their actions and their experience and many of them are thinking on multiple levels. This for me is the apart I enjoy the most.

As for me and my thoughts, aside from my direct involvement with the students and observing/monitoring their experience, much of this trip for me brings up so much of what I noticed during my extended period of time down south. It really is a world away on so many different levels, but just the same on so many others. In my mind, The same holds here just as it did in Chattanooga, and just as it does in Niagara…. The importance of family is fundamental. A “healthy” family is even better, but the importance of family is monumental. Infrastructure and community support are next. When that goes, so too does any chance of the youth that may be without the first item, family, to have a chance of succeeding.

These people that I see walking the streets, these people that I look at and automatically say to myself “that’s shitty”, are the same as I saw so often down south and the same as the one’s I see alone in Niagara. They look as though they are without life. Without hope, without happiness, without anyone that loves them, unconditionally. Without purpose or drive. They look sad, alone, dirty and scared; and that’s just flat out shitty.

I think that makes me more sad than anything else I see down here. It makes me sad that the people in this neighbourhood don’t even clean their yard. I mean seriously, how unhealthy (and this could be taken in terms of health applied to “family”, “maturation”, “self respect”, “mutual respect”, “love”, “education”, “opportunity”, etc ) is one person, that they can’t even clean up the trash in their yard. We’re not talking a house here or a house there, it is relentless, and it truly is sad to see.

Lack of school support? Lack or absence of family. Lack of coial support? Lack of opportunity? Lack of proper child rearing? Lack of religion? Lack of self respect? Excess of alcohol? Excess and availability of drugs? Or maybe so much of one is tied into the others, and the fact that there are so many of the components far weaker than others, or entirely absent, that the chance for success is infact hopeless? Maybe everything and anything is and does set them up for failure and they truly do have no chance. In any case, this makes me, as it does everytime I place extended thought towards the topic, very sad.

I use this in conversation with student's. I'm open about my own sadness and frustraion, and though I see many try to overcomplicate their answers with long drawn out philosophical statements, I opt to simplify it. "Does it really make a difference Curtis" one of them asks....."Well it sure doesn't hurt" is my response. "And in my mind, things that don't hurt, help. In some way way and in some fashion. And the more help we have in this world, the better off we'll all be".

I know it can be easy for me to focus on all the sadness I see around here, but then I look at the students, or the people walking by on the street, or the young lady in the stores at the cashier booth, and when I see their reaction when hearing what we're doing here, it reenforces; if it doesn't hurt, it helps". With the look on each of their faces, you can bet your ass, it's helping.

Take care.

-Curtis