Travels with Sherpa Tom: Part III, Poland with Habitat for Humanity, June 29

Inspired by our group's purchase and donation of a shop vac and other tools, HFH Gliwice's director convinced a local vendor to give a 20% discount and he purchased a concrete saw. Damian (in red shirt) is our onsite construction manager and he was very happy with all the new equipment. Here he is on Thursday opening up the saw.

At our now daily stop at Castorama, we bought some files so that we could return a sharp edge to our paint scrapers and putty knives.

When painting the windows, some paint got on the panes of glass - so we scraped the paint off the glass before reinstalling the windows.

Left to right: Samantha, Matt and John. Today was an unusual day. Another NGO that Habitat works with asked for help painting the room of a handicapped man. So Samantha, Matt and Ruth spent the day there working on the project. After work we went to the Polish version of a Chinese restaurant.

On Friday, we saw that this building was built in 1905 and was in use as an orphanage until 1995. It has been sitting vacant since then. The cobwebs, dirt and dust are unbelievable. I was vacuuming walls and ceilings. The white is where I have cleaned, the gray is the undisturbed dust and dirt.

Same here, the white is where I have vacuumed the walls and ceiling, the gray is what it looked like when we got there.

Heavy rains Thursday night and Friday morning cause more damage. This is looking up at the plaster between two of the beams (in the main room, the beautiful beams are exposed like this). The brown spots are from earlier damage, but the gray spot is the most recent leak.

I noticed that while we have the 20 liter bottles of water in the water fountain at the work site and are using our own refillable bottles for drinks, we have bought some six-packs of large water bottles. Strangely enough, Saguaro is the brand of the Polish company that bottles and sells water and carbonated beverages. And I thought Saguaros were only in the Sonoran Desert in AZ and Mexico.

Here are John and Jim scraping walls before plastering. This corner had water damage and some mold - all has been removed now.

"Asha" and "Mihal" at work on a stairwell window. Asha is an HFH volunteer from Warsaw. She took the day off from work Friday, allowing her to take the train here Thursday evening. Her parents live in Gliwice. She hopes to lead a Global Village HFH team to the USA.

Ryan, Matt, Ashley and I continue to dig out the concrete floor to access a drain pipe which needs to be replaced.

Even though it is destructive, there is something nice about swinging a hammer and making visible progress.

After showers and clean clothes, Asha led us into town for dinner at a restaurant she likes.

Along the way, we passed this pleasant park. I would have more pictures of the evening, but my camera stopped working. As usual, I later found out that the camera operator had not been properly recharging the battery.

This is our hotel: Sezam Guest House. It is part of Silesia Polytechnic University. The little mark over the first S and under the first A makes the pronunciation "Schlonska."

Jim and I are the bad boys who always sat in the back of the bus.

Jim and I always want to stop at Castorama, the big boys' toy store.

Saturday, we only worked half the day.

After working Saturday until 1:00, we had lunch and then went to visit the neighborhood built by HFH. Starting in 1992, they have built all 9 of these buildings which house anywhere from 6 to 12 families in separate condos. We were able to tour the inside of one condo - while not large, it was comparable to what you would see in many cities in the USA, two bedrooms, one bath, kitchen, dining room,living room, laundry room and storage room.