Building Character

Another night having to wake up at 2:30 in the morning to pee.  The walk is always interesting because there are a few flood lights lit, but otherwise the grounds are completely lit by the moon and stars.  Amazing...

Lunch was, yet again, rice and beans.  But they found a really cool way to spruce it up, and cheaply.  Put some pasta sauce on it.  I'm encouraged...this is something I could manage to cook at home someday and not screw it up too bad. :)

Today after dinner we had a meeting with Dianne and Chris (aka Eric aka Tom aka, etc....).
[This name game stems from some situational humor...I'll try to depict:
Mike says to me one day, "Hey Brian, did you see Chris that way?"
> "Nope"
> "Oh. ... Chris, you know, the guy with the orange shirt....Mercy Response guy..."
> "OH! No I haven't seen Chris."
So now we refer to Chris as Chris.  Or is it Eric?  And who's the guy traveling with the other group?  Tom? Joe?"
well you get the point.]
We learned a good bit about the history of Vineyard Mercy Response, but what we really neat to hear about what the overall scheme for what is to happen on the compound we're working.  This compound, when we finish some of our work here, will be used as a base camp for all sorts of different organizations and individuals seeking to do relief / recovery work in Haiti.  The dorms will probably hold close to 100 people total (just a guess).  Also on the compound there are plans to expand to clinic into a hospital, and also to have girls' and boys' homes (orphanages, basically).  There is currently a school and a church.  The property will provide a safe place for people who live in the area to come and take care of their schooling / medical / spiritual needs.  Cool stuff.

Other than that, today was just another day of breaking every regulation prescribed by OSHA.  Started the day by running 3 conductor electrical wire through the rafters of the soon-to-be dining hall on the compound.  Wouldn't it be fitting that they pick the guy who has a moderate distaste of elevations lacking adequate death-grip posts or rails to ride atop a 6 foot scaffold with no outer boundaries to do work entirely over his head.  Steel toe boots, hard hat, and double D-ring harness...no where in sight.  In a sense though, It was okay because I had my fall protection.  It's called white knuckles squeezing the hell out of the metal roof girders.  My fall protect also doubled as my self-propulsion, since I had to scoot around the room, and didn't always have someone to push me.  Don't worry though, I wouldn't do anything stupid like set the breaks...that would make it entirely too hard to move around the room when I needed to.  Upon raising my discomfort to Mike (not really looking for an answer, moreso just for perhaps a bit of understanding and compassion), he kindly responded with, "Oh hush.  It build character."

I suppose he had a right to say it though, considering he spent most of his day in a shipping container, moving boxes back and forth in the heat.  I'll give you this one, Mike...