(Editorial Comment: We are now up to the week of March 24th, and closing in on the present….)

When roofing beneficiary homes, we must ultimately decide the order of homes on which to work. As a reminder, our scope (and capacity) is re-roofing, but, the number of demolished homes, or those damaged to the point where re-roofing is functionally unsafe, (both for the people working on the roof and additional load created by the new roof) is astounding. But, we assess each beneficiary individually, thoroughly, trying in every way possible to qualify a home to be safely re-roofed. Our Israeli architect, Amit, is flat-out amazing – finding solutions for homes in utter shambles, (to say nothing of his incredible capacity to drive in reverse.) It is critical to explain at this point that we ALWAYS ensure our beneficiary home-owners know that we cannot promise them a hurricane safe result. And that they must seek appropriate safe shelter in the event of a storm.

Surveying homes can be very disheartening. Currently, in LaPlaine we have FOUR homes out of 31 beneficiaries which can be re-roofed. The damaged homes are simply not sufficiently stable enough to take a roof. Talk about feeling useless! Enter the next lesson learned – “Always chase old white guys walking down the street in a rural village, because they are likely to be construction volunteers.”

Our Israeli engineers thought I had totally lost what little sanity they believe me to have arrived possessing, when I started calling after the aforementioned group of men. It only got worse when I discovered that they were from Tennessee, volunteering from the Tulip Grove Baptist Church, outside of Nashville. Homies no less! Turns out that the Southern Baptist convention in the US has selected LaPlaine as a beneficiary community and they are sending regular volunteer working delegations, in coordination with the local Dominica Baptist community, headed by an American missionary, Pastor Mike.

Specifically, they have the home building capacity we lack. And so a partnership is born! It gives us a real sense of hope when we are working against such tight timelines to find additional options to get people sheltered before this upcoming hurricane season. Pastor Mike will always have a special place in my heart for handing me two (count them!) boxes of Town House Crackers when we visited his Mission House – but, alas, while close, it is not quite sufficient, for me to consider joining the church.

Enter our next dilemma. Power tools, specialized attachments, and safety equipment. Let me be clear: We have been the recipients of very, very generous donations, particularly from the UNDP. It arrives by cargo container, and IsraAID gets a huge allocation each shipment. Without it, our work would not be possible. PERIOD. We have all types of wood, roofing materials, (known here as CGI), and much, much more.

However, (you knew there would be a but…), despite the amazing generosity, we have huge gaps that must be filled to actually build a roof. We need all types of specialized screws, wood screws, concrete screws, screws for the CGIs, you get the idea. And then of course, Hurricane straps – which are more precious than gold around here. We source many of these requirements locally, at great expense, but, now we come to stuff (a technical construction term) that is completely ungettable on the Island.

We prioritize several things above all else. First – safety, second – quality work. And safety equipment simply doesn’t exist on the Island. And the power tools required to do quality work cost more than an east-coast Bar Mitzvah, even assuming you can actually find them to purchase. (Have I told you how much I miss Costco? And we aren’t even talking about the samples!)

Enter Amazon Prime. I put 8 DeWalt power/hammer drills, 16 bits, 6 chargers, 12 extra batteries, 4 Galvanized cutters, extra cutter blades, 45 helmets, 18 harnesses, 72 pairs of work gloves, and 12 power strips in my cart. There is a service called Aeropost. that allows you to ship to a “PO box” in Miami, which uses a forwarding agent to handle the freight forwarding to Dominica. When I sat with the forwarding agent in the Roseau to price out the shipment she shook her head kindly, (with a knowing look that said, “You are insane”), and flatly said, “Can’t be done by air, has to go by water – which will take a month.”

We didn’t and don’t have a month. I needed them in two days – we had contractors beginning to build. Exit Amazon. Enter small private plane. Long story on how we connected up to the plane and pilot, but, the net of it is that there is an incredibly compassionate and generous group of individual humanitarians who flew supplies into Dominica from Guadalupe after the Hurricane, and one of the pilots agreed to fly me to Guadalupe to shop, and then return same day. It should have been that easy – but, of course it wasn’t. Guadalupe is French speaking, and advance phone calls to several stores were worse than useless. Once again, it was show-up.

These amazing humanitarians arranged for Julien, who is a pilot himself and lives in Guadalupe, to meet me when we landed at the Guadalupe air-strip, (we are NOT talking an airport on EITHER side of the trip), and Julien, who speaks both English and French drove me all over Guadalupe in frantic search of the items on my shopping list. We had exactly 5 hours before we had to depart Guadalupe, so we could fly back to Dominica before 4 p.m. when Customs started charging overtime. Ultimately, we got almost everything – at least we spent $7,000 USD in the process, (holding our collective breaths every time we swiped the Credit Card). We packed everything into the car so tightly both of us were sitting on top of and under boxes. Julien is nothing short of a guardian angel – what a special young man!

When we pulled into the Guadalupe airstrip with no time to spare, (no bathroom breaks or even a stop at any of the glorious French bakeries for which Guadalupe is known – that being a true hardship!), the Pilot took one look at our haul and declared, “no way will it all fit”. We started loading, pushing and shoving boxes into every available space in his small plane. I offered to have him fly back, and that I would follow the next day via ferry. In the end, we unboxed the 45 helmets and crammed them into every available open space and everything fit. Once in flight, he commented, “wow, I can feel we’re flying heavy”, and I just took a deep breath and tightened my life vest…..

We landed in Dominica at 3:54 p.m. – just ahead of the 4 p.m. deadline. We unloaded everything and that brings us back to my last post and you know the happy ending. The Customs Official released the goods to me based on good faith that we would return and sort it all out, even though I had no paperwork or way to sort through the duties which might be due. The very next day, our Beneficiary workers were all outfitted with proper safety gear and quality tooling. A major victory!

If you’re wondering whether these posts are going to get any shorter, the answer is probably no…. but, for now, I’ll end here. Next post is going to be almost totally wordless, and when I get to the city this next Wednesday, I am going to create a post with almost all photos, (good news, huh?)

Photos of homes before we roofed them, homes with new roofs, and alas, homes that are simply impossible for us to roof.

Until then, I miss all of you, and cannot tell you how much I appreciate your support!