Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016
It was warm and sunny when we got up and by mid-morning is was 23 C (73F).
Gordon, Peter, Spencer and I went to Mary’s house and started removing the rotten, termite-infested wood from the wall around the fireplace. We carefully removed the siding so that we could save it for re-installing later.
After that we started taking down the rotten areas of the wall and roof. However it didn’t take us long to figure out that the whole wall was rotten and needed to be replaced, so we removed the fireplace and part of the chimney before remove the remnants of the walls. At one point it became obvious that the walls around the chimney were barely holding on to the roof and it would come down on its own if we touched it anymore, so we cleared the area while Peter and Gordon persuaded the walls to come down. Spencer took a video of the incident, which can be seen at the following link.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!Anh-wX1eFJ-8nx5tmMpev7Eflpip
Mary had made us some meat pockets for lunch and after lunch, Amy stopped by with some donuts. It is always a challenge not to put on weight when volunteering for MDS.
In the afternoon, we cleared all of the debris, rebuilt the floor, trimmed the roof and started to rebuild the wall. After a discussion with Mary regarding the fireplace, we decided to place it inside the room. Before we left to go back to the campsite, we had finished the floor and a good deal of the wall.
Margaret and Maria had spent the day at Sean’s house ( the same house they were at on Monday) where they continued to “mud” the walls. They had made good progress.
We arrived back in camp, just in time to take a quick shower before supper. Joan had prepared a roast beef dinner and Maria had baked some pies for dessert. I have yet to go on an MDS mission where I don’t put on weight!
After supper most of the volunteers spent some time exchanging stories, while putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
Ralf Hamm 