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Sweet equity (page 2)
BY THE TIME I arrive in August, the rain has cleared and the walls have been raised, in
part due to the enthusiastic help of a group of American RV Care-a-Vanners, who travel about
and pitch in for Habitat at builds across the continent.
Wendi Poirier, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity’s P.E.I. branch, is standing
in the red dirt wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt, cellphone pressed to her ear, trying to
track down the electrician. The problem with relying on donated expertise, she explains after
clicking off, is that “you’re essentially at their mercy.” They show up when they have time.
(But don’t they always?)
Today’s task — thank God — won’t involve any interior wiring. Instead, Poirier takes me
around to the backyard where a pile of wooden planks await their transformation into a small
barn-shaped shed.
“What happens when none of the volunteers know what they’re doing?” I worry aloud to Poirier.
I suddenly have a vision of well-intentioned but wacky structures that resemble the houses
in Dr. Seuss books going up across North America.
“We have an on-site building manager,” she assures me.
As the late summer sunshine heats up the morning, more and more volunteers filter into the
yard. There is a stout and jovial older woman who has just moved to Charlottetown and has
some downtime while she applies for jobs. A church-going family from Ottawa, in the area
to attend a wedding, show up and ease on some work gloves. I take direction from Myrna and
Jim Wicks, a pair of retired teachers who are active members of both the United Church and
Habitat for Humanity.
“We did a build in Guatemala last year,” Myrna tells me, adjusting her bifocals as she prepares
to make pencil marks on a plank. “It was a wonderful experience.”
Jim peers at a pamphlet detailing how to build the baby barn, not unlike a set of IKEA furniture
instructions. He shows us where to place the boards to nail them together. Myrna and I take
turns standing on the wood to keep it aligned while the other one hammers. My toes cringe
in my running shoes, but Myrna is much better at this than I am. After much laughter, my
net contribution, taking into account the number of nails I misdirected and had to yank out,
is more or less precisely zero.
Working beside us, the Ottawa mother (sporting a T-shirt with a proverb from the Gospel
of John) chuckles heartily at her own ineptitude while her husband coaches her in the task.
Somehow, miraculously, the baby barn begins to take shape.
We stop to share a lunch of homemade sandwiches and cookies. There is something incredibly
pleasing on this beautiful summer day about spending time with these friendly strangers,
all joined together by the spirit of doing good.
“What we find,” Poirier tells me later, “is that just having a house tends to improve the
self-esteem of the recipient families. They’ll go back to school or college, find the job
they’d needed.”
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