This morning we arrived to a fresh dumptruck load of river bed fill that we were going to use in the mix for making concrete for the classroom floors. It was quickly decided that this was the wrong sized material for the floors so it needed to be replaced. A dump truck and four workers arrived to shovel the entire load back into the dump truck- the walls of the truck were at least 8 feet up.
These four workers were able to load the truck in an hour and a half of intense backbreaking labour that we could hardly bear to watch. Youth was not on their sides. The other sad part of this situation for us was to realize that this load would be dumped and then reloaded with the proper fill, again by hand by these four guys. We cannot understand why it is this way and are all struggling with how labour is dealt with hear. This method allows Haitians a chance to work here and provide some means for their households.
We also needed to unload 150 - 100 lb bags of concrete at 11 am- The local workers and us( a total of 17 people unloaded them into the work area and the office in about 8 min with a lot of sweat and grey powdery necks.
The work began early in the day prepping the 3 classrooms for concrete and once the bags arrived the mixing began and went until shortly after 5 pm. At this point we had gone through approx 170 bags of concrete all by hand on the ground under the constant scrutiny of Jose who kept us guessing with his techniques. We did come to the point of trying to do what we were asked and not question but it was a struggle for all of us.
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