On A Hot Tin Roof

As it turns out tin roofs can get quite hot in the Caribbean sun. When we arrived at the work site today the two local workers that we are helping had a good start on the roof supports so some of us jumped right up in the rafters with them while others worked on the walls and the floor or the chicken coop.

After the support beams were all in place it was time to put on the tin roof and I think our team surprised the locals with their abilities. The team that came down after some dropped out was two men and 6 women (boy I hope I got that count correct). But these are New England women and they can do whatever they put their mind to do. So into the rafters the women climbed and kept up with the local workers to complete their half of the tin roof.


While the roof was being worked on so was some of the wall and the floor. The walls are cinder block was and so the team set to the task of masonry. This included helping to hand mix concrete on the ground with a shovel, hauling it 30 feet or so to the work site, and they laying the blocks, making sure they were level and in line with the others. And just to be perfectly clear that uneven bit of wall in the picture was done by the local worker, not by us.

The floor work meant a lot of leveling and filling the wheel barrow with gravel to give the floor a base on which concrete was poured. Again, the concrete work is all done by hand and carried to the work site using buckets.


While it was a lot of hard work the end result is starting to look quite nice, but by the looks of it there is a lot more concrete work to complete tomorrow as Bly about 1/4 of the floor is poured. And rumor has it along with completing the floor tomorrow we will start putting the chicken wire around the outside as well.