chapter 2. so far.

at Camp Hope again.

or rather, at the new Camp Hope.

The new Camp Hope is very different from the place where we stayed last May. very different. the showers and overall facilities are nicer. but, IMHO, the spirit, the amazing energy that permeated the original Camp Hope is not here yet. the beautiful murals that thousands of volunteers created on the drywall at camp are gone. probably forever. also missing, a few hundred AmeriCorps volunteers (they're on vacation, will be back soon).

Some familiar faces, Dave from the old camp is here, i remember him, he had to be reminded of my name, but i understand, there's one of him, and a few tens of thousands of volunteers that have marched through the doors of both camps. Steve, one of the locals is around too. I wrote about Steve last May, his experience is still as heart wrenching as it was then. things have changed, but not that much.

The parish feels more together than last time. I don't think I'm imagining it either, there are more restaurants, for sure, and more dollar stores, and more finished homes, and there's more of a sense of purpose. or so i want to believe.

This time around one brick is working only with habitat for humanity and things are for sure different between habitat and the St Bernard Project. let's just say that the SBP has better project managers, and maybe because they're so small and their resources are so limited, they have learned to make the most out of them (or are getting there), habitat... well, there are times when volunteers idle around because there are not enough tools or ladders or whatevers, or just plain not enough to do for 15 people working on a single house. we are working on a total of 5 houses, 4 of them within a block from each other. while all 5 houses are at a similar state of completion, not one of them has the same things finished, our house has flooring. others don't. we're installing baseboards and door casings. but all our walls are textured drywall. other houses are painted but floor boards and flooring are missing. we're all still working on the outside, most of the siding is completed for all 4. most. outside paint also varies from house to house. ours is pretty much done (for all the siding we have completed), others are not quite there yet.

I have this stretch goal: prime the entire house tomorrow. i doubt we'll even get started. oh well...

At the habitat build i have: painted (with Ben and Ming) the house's 2 long sides (48 ft each?), that took the better part of 2 days. conquered my fear of extension ladders... well... maybe conquering is a bit of an overstatement, but i can climb up and down comfortably. puttied (is that even a word?) about 75% worth of a house's door frames and base boards. cut enough insulation for about 60% of the house's square footage (installed under the house). helped assemble the back steps. then disassemble because the sides where flipped, then assemble again, then disassemble because the cardinal rule of "measure twice, cut once" had been ignored. then assemble again only to realize the 2by4's we were going to attach the stairs to were not square, nor level... and this is new construction.... hmm... at least my little old house has the excuse of being OLD, and having being built BEFORE the era of power tools. as an aside, funny how easy i slip into the role of carpenter or woodworker apprentice/assistant. Tato has trained me well. no doubt about that. hell i even know when and where to find an extra cordless drill when the battery of the one being used dies and there are no extra batteries around. (i even can tell a ryobi from a dewalt drill just by sound alone)

so, now that you're caught up on the habitat build, allow me to wax poetically about how we spent Monday:

GUTTING the Mental Health Clinic.

Camp Hope Dave told me on Sunday night that we'd be gutting a clinic on Monday and working on a park. turns out that for once i got the inside scoop before anyone else :) (it's all in who you know) so when Monday came around, and the choices were laid before us there really was no question for me. gutting!!!!

I have to confess that the main reason was because in my twisted mind, there's way more glamour to gutting than there is to clearing brush.

So we arrived at the clinic and yeah... do we need to remind ourselves it's been over 2 years? yes, we do. it has been over 2 years and 2 of the buildings in the complex had not been touched. the third one was almost completely cleared.

2 effing years!

So before any work could commence we had to suit up in haz-mat bunny suits. and gloves, and masks or respirators (for those who managed to find cartridges), hard hats and goggles (pics to follow), and rubber boots.

A group set to working in the almost cleared building and you can read all about it at the one brick blog here. the rest of us sorta ambled towards the untouched, unopened for 2+ years mental health center. a bunch of very determined guys set to working on prying the front door opened. it took them maybe half an hour. the rest of us started working on one of the side entrances.

Imagine a building that got flooded to the rafters 2 years ago (Aug 29, 2005, to be precise). a clinic. imagine the water receding after 3 or 4 weeks. imagine the building sitting there untouched until 4 days ago. also imagine some of the windows were broken and rain water has continued to get inside since. i don't think i can describe what we saw. i can't do it justice, I'm just not eloquent enough to paint the picture of what we had to deal with: 4 inches of still wet mud (it had rained the previous week) covering the floor. sticky smelly wet slimy slippery mud.

Then there were the walls. you think you know mold? let me tell you about mold. you don't know sh*t about mold. you don't know the smell of it. you don't know the look of it. you don't know sh*t about it. and you don't want to. really, you don't.

Do you know what happens to a building when it gets flooded to the rafters? think about it for a moment. what do you think happens to the wood furniture inside a room when the room is filled with water? you got it, it floats. and it gets shuffled and then as the water recedes, the furniture just floats down and it lands where it may. now, what do you think happens to paper? to chair cushions? to carpet? to computers? telephones? filing cabinets? light fixtures? what do you think happens to drywall and insulation?

There's no way to describe the smell.

There's no way to describe the how dirty you feel. this is bad filth. saw dust? dry wall dust? soil? they're all CLEAN dirty. gutting dirty is not the kind of clean, healthy, dirty you've experienced.

First order of business: get the mud off the floor. second: get big objects off the rooms, in one piece if they will fit through the door, in pieces if they won't. third: take down the drywall and insulation.

Now try doing it all without fully functioning wheelbarrows. one team got creative and used wheeled garbage and recycling cans to cart off the crap. at lunch there was an uprising among the ranks: we need wheelbarrows. so a collection was taken and off to home depot we go. if anyone were to take a poll among those of us there that day, we'd all agree that the $200 or so spent on 3 brand new, top of the line wheel barrels was money well spent.

Did i mention bunny suits? did i mention it was a warmish day? what do you think happens when one engages in physical labor inside a plastic suit on a warm day? 'nuff said.

At the end of the day we had 2 enormous piles of stuff we took off the buildings. and we barely made a dent.