The first major obstacle in beginning our renovation was to acquire a key to the room in question. This entailed meeting with the director of the IPCC campus (who is notoriously useless and loves to drag his feet). Our meeting was no exception to his general demeanor. First, he was "in a meeting" all day for 2 days and completely inaccessable. Then he tried to claim that they needed the room for some sort of administrative training sometime in the future, despite having received orders from the head of INATEC to grant us access. Once we got over that argument, he claimed there wasn't a single other locking room on campus where he could store the (unused) typewriters that currently lived in said room and we would have to wait until Guillaume got back on the weekend to discuss storing them. Though not a perfect solution, I managed to divert this argument by feigning fear of my boss's anger and offering to store the typewriters in the adjoining closet until G's return. Only 2 and a half days after we were supposed to start work on the room, I finally had the key in hand! Quite the achievement for Bluefields!
The next step was to empty out all the desks and typewriters and move them to the small closet next door. This was relatively easy until we discovered the plethora of hornets nests that adorned most of the windows and a few of the lights. At first, we managed to work in relative harmony until the stacks of desks begin encroaching upon the hornet's territory. At that point, in a momentary lapse of attention, I reached up to push a desk aside and immediately yelped in pain. Hopping down and running out the door with a sharp pain in my hand, I cursed the horrid insects and nursed my wound. Only, it wouldn't stop throbbing and was quickly getting red and swollen. Seeing what had happened, Ronald assured me that if I simply peed on my hand, it would all go away. A little skeptical, but without many other options and in serious pain, I opted to try this bush remedy. Surprisingly enough, it worked wonders. Only moments later the swelling had subsided and I was able to return to work.
I spent the rest of the day removing louvered glass panels and laborously washing each by hand. This was the first moment that I wished we owned a power washer. It would however, not be the last.Although I had nearly forgotten about the hornet sting during the day, at night, as I lay in bed I could feel my hand slowly swelling and when I woke I was greeted with an itchy, bloated, bright red fist. Not a great way to start the day. Opting to work on some drawings rather than doing hard labor, I passed the glass washing task onto Juli and spent the day creating working drawings for the desks Felix will begin building shortly. I was greatly excited to see that he had already started on the tables I had assigned to him the day before, but my excitement was bit premature. By lunch time, Felix had already come to inform me that the wood we had purchased was still wet and would need at least a week to dry before any joints could be milled. Disappointed, but still enthusiastic, I turned my attention to other tasks.
One of the nice things about this week has been that I moved my office over to the shop, which means I actually get to leave the house. Each morning I walk through the streets and up the hill to the INATEC campus and our workshop. I spend the day either working along side the workshop boys or on the computer creating drawings. At lunchtime, we all hike back over the house for a big meal of rice, beans and some sort of meat before returning to work in the afternoon. It's been wonderful getting a chance to interact with all the local workers rather than being stuck in the tiny little office most people work in at the house.
Another recent alteration that has changed the pace of life is that we have now officially entered the rainy season. Everyday without fail, the skies will open up at least once to release torrents of rain. Unless you've personally experienced a tropical storm, I'm not sure I can properly describe to you the volume of water that rushes from the sky in a single instant. You can literally get drenched to the bone passing from the doorway to the sidewalk. Being wet has simply become a fact of life. If you need to leave the building, you're going to be wet. It doesn't matter how big your umbrella or how thick your raincoat, you're still gonna get wet. Fortunately, it's still relatively hot, so getting wet isn't such a big deal. It's not like a New England storm where you're shivering wet and miserable. Here you're just wet. In any case, the change in weather has brought a change to the pace of life as well. Things move with the rhythm of the rains. If you'd planned to go shopping, but it starts raining, you change your plans. If you know you have to do something outside, you make it happen whenever the skies are clear.
Alright, back to our new office space. Do you remember how I started wishing we had a power washer with the glass? Well, the next time I spent the day working on cleaning up the classroom, it was to scrape the flaking paint throughout the whole room by hand. Power washer would have been helpful. Next, I scrubbed all the walls, again by hand, to get rid of years of bird and bat shit, termite nests, vicious biting ants and other such things. Again, power washer would have been wonderful. Nonetheless, by the end of the week, we managed to get one coat of paint on the back wall and everything else prepped to start painting again on monday. Like I said, quite an achievement for the week. Now we just have to hope that the wood dries enough to finish the furniture and that the paint dries despite the torrential downpours and ridiculous humidity. Keep your fingers crossed and we'll see how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment