GPzMike Abroad

The end of a couple of looooong days. Our school building troupe of 5 (the 'core' crew, so to speak, though many others have participated and given much to the projects) went to School Build Site 2 where the doors and murals were yet to be hung along with a punchlist of other items - a leak here and there, some touch up painting, etc...yes, even in Haiti there are punchlists.
 
 I promised the crew white sand beaches, girls in grass skirts, and a short day today (day 2). Instead we got a rocky shoreline, one discarded size AA (or thereabouts) bra laying amongst the rocks, and 2 10 hour days with minimal breaks. I'ma baaaaaad boss. But we did come very very close to finishing. If not for a cordless battery pack fiasco we would have finished. Tomorrow (Saturday) is the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. We dug a 35' trench along the backside of the school, laid sheet plastic against the cinder block wall to protect from water intrusion, and backfilled, hung 4 doors and 6 shutters/window coverings (including levers to keep them open and barrel bolts to lash them down in high winds), cleated the nails holding the entire corrugated sheetmetal roof in place, painted touchups and varnish the doors and jambs, and backfilled the front of the building with river rock.
 
 All was going well until we discovered that we'd brought a 12 volt cordless battery pack but had left the drill at base leaving us with 2 18 volt batteries to power 3 cordless tools. Even that was no problem until one of the locals unplugged the charger from the generator leaving us with 1 pack for 3 crews and 1 pack on a 1 hour charger. When I checked the pack 40 minutes later I discovered that it was giving an error message and the pack had not charged at all. Now we were in seriously deep doodoo. 5 guys standing around waiting on a 1 hour charger to charge 1 battery that we'd all immediately need and that none of us could move forward without. 1 door and 3 shutters yet to hang, 2pm.
 
 A frantic call to Sinead our intrepid Project Coordinator and she fired Tom (who was cooling his jets at base preparing to leave at 5am Saturday morning) out on the back of a moto(cycle)taxi to our locale. Tom arrived with 2 corded drills and by the time he made it we had recharged one battery (the other, of course, having suddenly gone belly up and blinking an 'internal error' code of dot dash dot dash). Back in business but now it's nearing 3:30 and we MUST be back at base before dark as travel in Haiti after dark is considered highly dangerous with the level of (dis)repair of both vehicles and roadways and (un)enforcement of any sort of vehicle code or traffic code. (To be fair, I don't speak the language so it's hard to ask a Gendarme if there is a Vehicle Code or Regulations handbook).
 
 It's really t+21 now, 5am....and I can hear the taxi pulling away from the front of the All Hands (http://hodr.org/) compound with the first of many new friends I've made heading for the airport. Fair well, my comrades. Tom, Andriya, and Jeanina (whose name I keep getting wrong and so I affectionately refer to her as "Richmond" since that's where she lives...Richmond, CA). Others have gone before (Megan, Steve, Chris, and Angie) but I've not been here to hear the taxi pull away as they've left during the middle of the day. It's a different feeling when you say g'bye and head out the door for your workday and they are just not here when you return than when you are here and they say g'bye and head out in the taxi that you hear trundling away.
 
 Anyway, I'm going back to the school today to finish off the locks on the last two shutters as well as the opening mechanisms - that will complete the school until we get nuts for the foundation bolts and the hurricane ties out of customs where they've been for at least a month (yeah, go figure). The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony will be this afternoon.
 
 It's 5:30 am now...time to get up or at least start thinking about it since I've got no crew to wrangle this morning. Our Tap-Tap to school site 2 (18°26'13.43"N by 72°41'41.79"W) won't leave until mid-morning. The Google Earth Sat photo for this region appears rather old since there are buildings in the photo that aren't present today (as well as a Unicef tent and other makeshift buildings).