Safety Second, Table First

At TLC all dreams can come true, if you have the patience and the follow through to make it happen. This morning I dreamed of a table in our volunteer house that wasn’t sitting on broken bricks and so low you felt your back splintering while trying to play cards.

To achieve your dreams you must be willing to conquer the bodega. The bodega is a wild, untamed place (a one minute walk from my front door) where chaos reigns supreme. There are piles of mismatched wood, piles of coffee, piles of nails and piles of manure. Inside the bodega itself is every tool and dangerous piece of goal accomplishing you can think of – it looks just like my grandfather’s fabled basement, except Grandpa probably wouldn’t have gone for the fertilizer air freshener.

In a lawless country in rebellious forest, the workshop fits precisely and while safety is of no concern, it is the place to get things done. Along with all the right supplies, there is also a constant stream of help monitoring your progress. The workers employed by the school are men between the ages of 16 and 60, all with tremendous smiles and years of practical experience in everything you and I would never know how to do. Javier helped me clean my wood with a sharp wire brush. Christian helped me use a sander, and Don Marcos saved the day.

I had recruited Dan, a go-getting volunteer like myself, to assist with the construction, and while we thought two gringos was enough for a simple coffee table, Don Marcos would keep showing up exactly when we would do something stupid. We were almost finished when one hammer strike took the whole project down (Ay!) and Don Marcos flew in out of nowhere with his bright blue screws (which did mess with the integrity of my raw wood concept, but it’s going to have to be funky to be functional) and reinforced the Hey-sus out of it.

And what do you know, dreams do come true! My eyeballs may have almost gotten fried when Javier shaved the points of the screws off with a sander, but for the first time ever there is a beautiful table in our living room and while Grandpa was certainly grumbling “Where are your safety goggles, girl?” he would be so damn proud of my creation.

La Mesa de Mis Sueños