Workin’ Hard

Today we did the most labor intensive part of our trip.  We went back to the place where we had cut down tres the other day (Friday, I think), this time to cut down another tree, burn the brush we had cut down last time we were there, and dig some holes.

You wouldn’t think that would be a hard day’s work, even with the hot equator sun and uneven terrain covered with brush to hide the dips and swells of the fairly steep yard.  But then, you’ve never tried to dig a hole in Pearls, Grenada.

Here’s how it went down.  Charlie pointed to Greg where he wanted to start digging the first hole and then walked away to measure where the other holes would go.  Greg started in on the brush first, and I looked around for another shovel to go help him dig.  I picked up the shovel to my left and stabbed it into the ground as I leaned forward to get up from my seat (a chainsaw case).  But I heard the ‘all to familiar’ twang of shovel hitting rock as I fell back down to the case and, looking silly, grabbed the top of the shovel to retry my aim.  But when I looked down, I didn’t see any rock in front of me.  So, I stabbed the shovel down again, this time paying attention to how it landed, and again, it bounced off the ground just as if it had hit a rock.  So I took the shovel and pressed it into the so-called rock to see what it was and to my surprise…there was no rock.  It was just dirt.  Plain ol’ dirt/clay/unbreakable brown stuff.

It took 4 of us over 2 hours to dig 2 holes.  We had to take turns because we just got so worn out banging the shovel down as hard as we could over and over again (we did try other techniques too, but this seemed to work the best).  I’ve never experienced anything like it.  It was perplexing and amazing all at the same time.  It felt a lot like the many winters in CT I would spend chopping solid 3 inch ice off our driveway with an ice pick, except we had to dig 3 feet.

But in the end, we got 2 of the 4 holes dug pretty close to 3 feet, and we got the trees cut down and moved, tomorrow we might go back and burn the stuff we cut down today and dig the other 2 holes.

We made our way back to the house tonight and got ready for dinner.  Karie’s back is slowly getting better, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to blister (which is a good thing).   A guitarist from one of the local churches came over with his guitar and I gave him some basic guitar lessons, and just about the time we were wrapping up, Sue, Karie, and Greg decided they wanted to go to the beach.  It was a short walk to the ocean, where the moon was full and the water warm.  We floated and relaxed and talked about some of our goals for the island and our role in it, and we laughed about all the crazy stuff that Sue’s kids did when they were younger   Eventually, our fingers turned to prunes and we had to get back home to get ready for another early day, which brings me to now.  So, have a great evening; where ever you are

JF

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