You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen Mr. Provencher negotiate the price of a purchase. He reclines in the seat, taps his glasses, and strokes his chin like he’s chairing a board meeting. All the while, and with a completely straight face, he hilariously mis-repeats what the seller is telling him.
“My best offer is 15,000 rupees,” a gemstone dealer was saying. We were sitting in his small shop on Negombo’s main street this afternoon helping one of the students make a purchase. Actually, Mr. Provencher was helping; I was just along for the entertainment.
“Right, 12,000,” Mr. P replied. “We were looking for something closer to 10,000, actually.”
“Well, I said 15,000,” the dealer said.
“Yeah, but 13,000 is just too high for us,” Mr. P. came back with. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. This continued for the better part of 45 minutes as Mr. P. wore the guy down with his fuzzy math. We walked away satisfied. The dealer walked away with a headache.
Today was our last day of work. It was another hot one and by 4pm the team was absolutely spent—physically and mentally. I was working at a sand sifter with Miss Khadija and Marieke (the fine sand is used to make cement) during the last two hours of the day and the exhaustion was written all over our faces. The shovel felt like lead and my shoulders were begging for mercy. The sight of everyone at the van as we prepared to return to the guest house told me I wasn’t the only one.
But now we can step back and see what we’ve accomplished. We had an idea when we came to Sri Lanka that we’d all be working together to build one house. I think we all shared a common vision of starting with a bare plot of land and producing a home from that, or at least the beginning of one. Instead we’ve worked to improve the homes of many families in the village. In at least two cases we’ve helped to expand a home built by previous Habitat volunteers.
Isn’t the result the same? We came here to help, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and I think we can leave Sri Lanka satisfied that we did our best and did our part. Another team (this one from Qatar) arrives in three days to pick up where we left off. The cycle begins anew.
[Travel info for parents: We will be arriving in Muscat at 0425 on Thursday morning on Gulf Air flight 560. The bus will take us from the airport to school. We should be arriving at school between 7:00 and 7:30.]
Mr. P and one of the homeowners
Eckhart and Renzo pick up some chicks
Piling into the van after our final day of work