March 7, 2005
What a day!
Julie and I woke up early for breakfast and we all left here by 7:30am. We arrived at the Good Neighbor Settlement House around 8am and waited for the contractors to arrive and lead us to the house we’d be working on. The local highschool (Porter High) gave us 3 huge baskets full of food and drinks.
The contractor for the house, Maurizio, was a genuinely nice guy with a huge heart. We all got assigned tasks and switched up among ourselves. I started off with landscaping – rounding the plants – i.e. digging up the grass and weeds around all the plants and trees and breaking up the dirt. It was a lot harder than it seems and I got blister within the first 10 minutes.
Good Neighbor Settlement (GNS) is kinda like a homeless shelter/soup kitchen – people can actually stay there and I guess in past years, ASB groups have done that. GNS hires contractors, e.g. Maurizio, and gives them $5,000 (per home) to make repairs to homes that are in dire need. I’m not sure all of the requirements and stipulations, but applicants must either be over 65 years old or disabled and be up with their taxes. I don’t know exactly how it works.
Olivia, the daughter of the lady’s house we were working on today, was pretty old too. She was incredibly generous with providing us with a constant flow of water and cool drinks.
There was another group, the NOMADS, who worked along side us. They’re a Methodist group that travels around the US in trailers helping out in projects like GNS. The service they were doing was impressive, but what was more impressive was that they were pretty elderly and still doing this kind of stuff.
We piled trash into Maurizio’s truck (had to make 2 trips and still all the garbage wasn’t gone) and drove it to the landfill. The ride over there was awesome. A bunch of us piled into the back of Maurizio’s truck and rode along under the hot sun balanced out by the cool breeze created by the truck driving. This was the first time I’ve seen a real landfill (“what, you’ve seen a fake one?” – Mehrnoush). And I know this is gonna sound strange, but it was amazing. Don't get me wrong, it was disgusting, but it was so vast that it was fascinated. Piles of trash, a big machine car running over it all, and thousands of sea gulls. A guy at the top of the mountain points you where to park, and you unload your stuff. We had about 1400 lbs worth of stuff in the back on the first trip.
Back at the house, we did more landscaping, painting and trashing (pickin it up, that is). The bathroom was being remodled (and had no door – just a toilet) and there was no running water. So that was an interesting experience.
During the next landfill trip, I sat up front with Maurizio and we talked the entire time there and back. He’s a very interesting guy and it made me kind of sad because he talked about never having done anything more with his life and never leaving Brownsville because he was too afraid of failing and making the first step. He said he was certain that if he could just make that first step, he’d work so hard and never fail – that’s how he is at any task you put before him – but that first step is close to impossible for him. We talked about a lot of other stuff – his family, government, life, education, the USA, etc. it was really refreshing.
We had one of the vans parked in the front lawn and blasted Jack Johnson and Bob Marley all day…and of course the car battery died by the time we picked up to leave. Sumeet was pretty stressed.
We came back tired, sweaty, and dirty
Some people had it in them to play ultimate frisbee and soccer, but I got first dibs on the shower and then just chilled.
As a group, we sat down and went through the highs and lows of our day. It was cool that most of our lows had to do with physical things – i.e. most of the day was very good.
Then we played “where the wind blows” (“This is NOT a 3 person couch!”) and Charades. It was really funny.
And that’s pretty much our day.
Quotes of the day:
“Oh man! I brought girls socks by mistake!” – Dave
“Oh man! I’m wearing girl’s underwear by mistake!” – Sumeet
“We have to go get more white Cheez-its” – Lisa
“What, you got something against the black ones??” – Jon
“the great wind blows for anyone not wearing a bra…”
“Dave, why are you still sitting??”
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