Thursday's Work

As Thursday morning rolled around and we found ourselves somewhat refreshed, we returned to work. We still had the rest of the rocks to clear from the second driveway location, so we re-created the chain gang and cleared the pile fairly quickly. 

The next thing that had to happen before we could frame and level the driveway, was to remove the mango tree (not the yummy mangos) that stood right in the middle. When we asked Becky about possibly re-positioning the driveway a few feet to the left so we could leave the tree, she laughed and said that it took longer to pass things through the UBL board than it does to pass things through a Methodist Administrative Board, so chopping the tree it was.

Rafael began with an axe, but soon found that due to the dense nature of the mango wood, it was too hard to effectively chop it down. His next attempt involved a Sawzall, which quickly gave way to the density as well. Without access to the tools we would normally utilize in the US, we had to go back to the drawing board. A huge thank you to everyone who purchased stock in the mission team, because your funds purchased the university’s first chain saw! Power tools cost about twice as much here as they do in the US, but they now have a chain saw that will hopefully last them through the remainder of the building project over the next few years.

With the tree finally down, Eben jumped in there with the saw to break the tree into manageable pieces for removal. With the stones removed and the tree cut down, we were now free to frame and level the driveway! In order to level the ground, we had to dig out dirt from the top of the hill and wheel barrow it about 50 yards to the driveway site. With all of us working, this took the entire afternoon, and we still didn’t quite finish the leveling… but Friday is another day.