Setting the Stage

1.09.19

[The video team is still working -- almost 1am! -- and the pictures are almost all gathered from the last two days.  Will post as fast as we can . . . ]

Um.  Wow.  There’s always that day in a DIRT trip when everyone’s mind is completely blown, where we get the general lay of the land and our already high levels of anticipation and excitement climb even higher.  Today was that day. 

We didn’t quite get a legitimate amount of sleep, because we just couldn’t manage to shut our whole thing down at a decent enough hour to let ourselves get some real rest.  The breakfast crew had decided to make oatmeal for the morning, which counts as our quickest possible meal (unless we settle for Clif bars or plain granola some day).  So, they only had to get up at 6:30 to get things ready for everyone else’s 7:00 wakeup.  We had VERY strong coffee (need to get the hang of those ratios!) and oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar.  Some of us put granola on our oatmeal (“oats on oats!” according to Sophia) and we all moved pretty quickly to be sure that we were all set up and ready to work by the time 8:30 arrived.  

We were expecting all of our community partners to be at our house at 8:30 but that’s not quite the way things shook out.  We didn’t mind.  “Being ready” for work means having on the right clothes (junky ones), the right shoes (closed-toed, even though we spend most of our off hours in flip flops), and having our daypacks properly prepped.  A proper daypack contains rain gear (you never know when the sky will burst), safety gloves (two kinds: rubber-palmed ones for messy jobs; leather ones for tasks like shoveling and raking), safety glasses (for more jobs than might seem reasonable), a full water bottle (filled with water purified by our new system – THANKS, BEUTNERS!!), two Clif bars, a flashlight, sunglasses and/or a hat, sunscreen, insect repellent, and whatever else we need to meet our responsibilities (video cameras for the daily video crew, food-related items for the kitchen crew, and first aid items for the med team). Because this was our first day getting ready, we had a lot to think about.  

We were grateful that our SBP volunteer coordinator was a bit late, but we were even more grateful to hear from him once he arrived.  His name is Christopher, he is a native of Puerto Rico and a recent(ish) college grad, and he is very passionate about his vocation as a disaster relief specialist in his island home.  He helped us to understand the tasks at hand at the three houses we would visit today and he further helped us to understand the overall volunteer economy post-Maria. We were surprised and excited to learn that in some weird way, our volunteer hours will be catalogued and tallied up and will be used to offset the crippling debt to the mainland that Puerto Rico currently carries.  We don’t really understand how that works but it sounds good to us, so we will just repeat it and move on.

We divided across three worksites with completely different jobs to be done.  One site tore up a tile floor (SO FUN, even though we wish it weren’t necessary), did some roof sealing, and painted interior walls. Another group painted interiors, including ceilings.  Another prepped for painting (tomorrow) by scraping and clearing fasteners from exterior walls. Many of those fasteners were placed recently, as their purpose was to hold up the plywood that the homeowners hoped would save their house from the storm.  

We all learned about tools we didn’t already know about and we also learned how to make do when the tools we really need aren’t available.  We learned that brains often overrule brawn on manual labor tasks.  We learned a lot of physics, whether it was about the directionality of paint that is supposed to be adhering to a ceiling or about how to use torque when using a flat bar.  

We learned little things about the families attached to all of the houses where we worked, though we had different levels of interaction with each family (and each member of those families).  One house included an 8-year-old boy named Ropniel who speaks pretty good English, though he was shy to prove it at first.  He got less shy when he was showing us the fighting roosters behind his house (not that the roosters were fighting at the moment; just that the purpose of their existence was to fight).  

We actually had to cut our workday short – despite our contentment in all that we were doing – because we had arranged for a professor from the University of Puerto Rico to help us learn about the community of San Isidro, where we will work later in our stay. We worked as long as we could then went to San Isidro for a very late lunch of pork chops, rice and beans, fried plantains, and some interesting sauces (plus some sweets for dessert!).  We were all very polite the first time through the line, trying to make sure the food would stretch through our whole group, but when we went for seconds, we were merciless and wiped out the entire meal. The San Isidro community is cooking for us and providing transportation for us throughout our stay, so we are clearly in good hands.  

After we ate, we did a walking tour of the community, getting some incredible vistas from high on the hill: of the rainforest not far in the distance, the community as a whole, and the landscape that helped to explain why the flooding hit this area so hard. At the worst point, the water stood fifteen feet higher than usual, meaning whole neighborhoods were underwater while others were cut off from the rest because they were surrounded by water even if they were relatively safe.  Some of those “higher ground” areas took huge hits from wind, including a few houses that were literally blown away by the storm.  

After our tour, the professors from the university helped us to get some perspective on things, including the enormous human rights issues that surround natural disasters.  San Isidro has a very complicated history. Having started as a flood plain, the area was “gifted” to some nearby immigrants by a local politician in exchange for votes. The politician led them to believe that the land would thereby be “theirs” but no titles were ever transferred and their hold on the property is quite tenuous.  Some have lived there for as many as thirty years, but there is no “common law” provision that guarantees them any rights to continue to do so.  

The professors that helped us to grasp the issues were very impressive activist intellectuals who really inspired us all.  We found innumerable connection points between everything they said and the books that we all read to prepare for this experience.  And we were all motivated to think of our own future professional lives and how we – like our speakers today – might channel our talents toward something as worthy as the mental and physical health of the San Isidro community and the legal needs they face.  

It’s late and we’re tired so we need to stop telling you about our day.  Two of our major random insights of the day were: 1) really cold water is a truly luxurious thing to drink and 2) our lifelong belief that roosters crow at dawn was completely shattered by the constantly crowing roosters all around us on the San Isidro walking tour.  All of the DIRTies who have come before us know that these totally mundane revelations are among the most beautiful of all.  

We have a long work day ahead of us tomorrow, with each group returning to the house it visited (and worked at) today.  We can’t wait . . .

In our first workday in Puerto Rico, the group visited Jossie’s house in San Isidro for lunch. Lindsay couldn’t keep her hands off the wafers. 

Walking over the makeshift bridge to see the beautiful view of the wetlands and rainforest near San Isidro. 

On our hike through San Isidro, we stumbled upon a plywood street sign that one of the locals created as a temporary solution. 

This boat was presumably used at one of the homes in San Isidro was flooded in around fifteen feet of water during Hurricane Maria. 

This painted red truck is an example of how the Puerto Ricans have rebuilt a part of their community. 

This is a sign of the aquaduct project. It was originally fueled by Jossie but got shut down by the mayor. Now it is being worked on again and the mayor takes credit for it. 

Here you can see some of the houses still utilizing blue tarps due to the damage of their houses not yet being fixed. 

Eating lunch after splitting up at the work sites. We enjoyed our lunch at Jossie’s community housing and met some of the people we will be working with this month. 

While on our walk through San Isidro we got to see some beautiful views. 

The community we will be working with live on hills but are also vulnerable to floods due to the wetlands. 

This is an image of painting with the children from Viviana and Eugenio’s home. 

This is an image of Lindsay and Hope on a scaffold painting the trim of the roof of Luz’s home. 

At the worksite for Luz’s house, we found a purple bike. The purple bike is an award given every day to a certain individual who upholds what it means to be a DIRTY for that day. Maybe this is a foreshadowing?

This was a beautiful way to end a long day at work. Every afternoon is beach vibes!!!