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July 10, 2005
First day at HFH
Yesterday was my first day actually on the job at Habitat For Humanity. They sent me an email announcing an introductory meeting for people interested in being crew leaders, so I wanted to attend that. As it turns out, the “meeting” wasn’t much more than a brief introduction to the Site Coordinator, a very friendly guy named William, who outlined the basics and then assigned me to a house.
Generally, here’s how it works: on this site, HFH is building about a dozen or so houses on two or three adjacent streets. William is in charge of directing construction at the entire site—naturally, what this really means is he goes around from house to house checking in and making sure things are running smoothly and resolving whatever issues might arise, be they construction-, materials-, or personnel-related. Each house has one or two House Leaders who are, obviously, in charge of construction for that particular house. They determine what needs to be done and then delegate jobs to the Crew Leaders, who then direct the volunteers.
At least, that’s the idea. In practice (at least, on this particular day at this particular house—this, was, after all, only my first day), things are less rigidly structured. We had about eight or nine volunteers at my house, including two House Leaders and three Crew Leaders, so perhaps we had a pretty high “* Leaders”-to-volunteers ratio. Mike (one of the House Leaders) reminded me that as a Crew Leader, I needed to make sure the volunteers were happily and busily employed, and that if I found myself at work while volunteers were standing around doing nothing, than something was wrong. I was glad for the reminder, although since it was my first day, I really felt more like a volunteer than a Crew Leader anyway.
The house at this stage isn’t much more than an empty box. The concrete for the foundation had been poured only last week, and we had two major tasks to complete in our 9-3 work shift. First we fitted a large vinyl sheet around the outside of the foundation to act as waterproofing, and secondly we installed a cap of two-by-fours on top of the basement walls, on which the rest of the house will be built. It seems that a foundation rarely ends up being perfectly level, and so these two-by-fours are laid out and shimmed underneath so as to insure a smooth, level platform on which the rest of the house can sit.
We finished maybe 90% of the job by 1:00, but between lunch and the overwhelming heat, the last 10% really took all of the last two hours. The heat was really amazing and oppressive. The forecast said highs around 93 with a heat index of 100, and I believe that, but our work was below ground level in an empty box—in other words, without shade or breeze. Fortunately, someone had brought a large cooler of water, or else we’d have been in trouble; in fact I heard that someone got heat stroke at one of the other houses. I’d forgotten to get sunscreen, but I borrowed some from one of the other volunteers, so while I’m pretty pink right now, at least I’m not severely burned.
I really had a great time. The people were all fun, friendly, and mostly easy to work with. The work itself wasn’t overwhelmingly difficult, but it provided enough physical challenge to make it enjoyable. I was really nervous at the start of the day, typical first-day jitters, but now I’m looking forward to going back, and in fact I’m a bit sorry I won’t be able to return for three weeks.
Posted by alex at July 10, 2005 05:01 PM