Our work with HERO

We're about halfway through our third work week here in Greensboro and my team has gotten so much done!


Our first project with HERO is helping to refurbish a Rosenwald school (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenwald_School) so that it can become a community center for the rural part of town--a place where people can come together for informal classes, for community meetings, for voting, etc. We've had to do a lot of cleaning up (the building was home to some owls and other critters for a long time, I think) and painting, but we're also replacing some old ceiling, wall, and floor boards, fixing up windows and doorways, adding a front stoop, fixing up some siding, and bringing it back from disrepair.

Sarah and Keri ripping out old ceiling boards and bracing for falling owl nests...

here I am, all covered up and scraping wasps nests and vines and dirt off the walls so we can paint

The project is being overseen by Corinne, one of the AmeriCorps VISTA members working with HERO this year. She went to Auburn for architecture and has been working on, among lots of other things, keeping the design of the refurbished school consistent with the original. We've had a few former students of the school (now older adults) stop in and regale us with their cherished memories and thoughts about how they thought it was bigger when they attended. It'll be nice for it to be a place they can still recognize even being used for another purpose and even after so many years.

Our construction supervisor, Roland, is just great, too. He was hired by HERO just a week before we arrived after answering an ad in the local newspaper. Roland's been retired for a couple of years, but decided to come back to work when his wife let him know he wasn't doing enough during the day while she was at work. :) He comes with a wealth of knowledge and skills and has been very kind in helping lead and teach us so we can get the job done. He's also made sure to warmly welcome us to Greensboro by supplying us with hats from the Citizens Bank of Greensboro (as far as I can tell, with no affiliation to the big Citizens Bank) and from the Greensboro Farmers Co-Op. He also invited us over to his farm after knowing us for only a week for a cookout and to play. He barbecued some chicken and homemade pork sausage and let us take his mule out for a ride to his cow pasture. His mule, you might ask? I, too, was expecting a donkey when he mentioned it, but it turns out it was actually a four-wheeler, a little all-terrain vehicle made by Kawasaki. You learn something every day, I guess... When my team and I shared our mismatched expectations of the mule with the HERO staff, we were just about laughed out of town. "Y'all ain't from around here, are ya?" We love the south!



That's all for now, though of course I have plenty more to talk about. I just got back from a great spring break trip to Nashville with my friend Andy and HERO's been planning lots of fun things for us around the area. I'll be working at Pie Lab again on Saturday, so e-mail me favorite recipes if you get a chance!


xo