So today I split my day between being an Ironwoman and a Chickenwire Queen. It is very interesting how one makes do in Honduras. The Ironwomen make the rebar. I mean make it. We start with a long rod of steel which we cut into pieces of a defined length. There is an old plank with big nails sticking halfway out to make a form to bend the lengths of steel into C shaped pieces. You stick the steel rod in between the nails and bend one side with some long tool with a little notch at the end, then you bend the other side. Meanwhile someone else is cutting skinny pieces of wire into short lengths. The third iron woman takes the C shapes and the thin wire and attaches them to two long pieces of the thick steel (rebar?) which is used to reinforce the concrete. Surely this works differently in the US?
As Chicken Wire Queen, our job is to nail chicken wire onto the adobe walls in preparation for the mortar/plaster. This is an improvement over the way we did it earlier in the week when we didn't have chicken wire. Back then we would place nails along the wall and wrap wire around them to create a large checkerblock pattern. The original CW Queens, Karen and Pamm, alertly discerned that chickenwire is not terribly expensive and much more efficient for the plasterers. They initiated an effort to go buy several rolls of chicken wire and several hammers (also very scarce here.) Fortunately, Bonnie manages our ministry budget so well that we had the money to buy the supplies. So, armed with chicken wire and hammers, all we needed were the "nails" to attach them to the wall. The nails are actually U shaped pieces of metal. Can you guess where the nails come from? Yup, the Ironwomen. We cut lengths of steel, place in the form and bend it. One nail at a time. Happily, Fr. Jamie became an honorary Ironwoman and innovated a new process to speed up the cutting and bending. Meanwhile, we were working hard to stretch the chickenwire taut as we nailed it in place. It is alot harder than you would think. The good news is I am much better at hamming (Hunter's word for hammering) than I was during my first Habitat build. But, not that much better... I slammed the hammer onto my left index finger. (I want you to know it is excrutiating to type F, R, T, and G.) Fr. Jamie offered to do last rites on the nail later tonight.
Tomorrow is our last full day of work. We really want to get all the chickenwire up in cottage 3. There is a real sense of urgency because we need to get the walls plastered and the roofs on both cottages before the rains come.
Dinner time.
Hasta manana!
Amanda
