I’ve been home in Canada for about six weeks and I’m starting to think about what my next move will be. This time around things are a bit different because I arrived without any escape plan. It’s been great not having anything set in stone for the next six months of my life but unless I want to still be sitting here in six months, I will need to come up with some plans and make some decisions on my next move.
Fortunately that decision was sort of made for me when I received an email from the folks at Hands On a few weeks ago. They were trying to recruit experienced tradespeople for a rebuilding project in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hands On deployed to Cedar Rapids last year for several months, helping out after the area was completely flooded and now they’ve managed to get a grant to help the community rebuild. I’m not an experienced builder but it looks like they’ll need some people to do the grunt work and that’s where I come in.
I’ve secured a spot and it looks like the project will be starting sometime in early October. This project should be really interesting since instead of tearing things down, we will get to build things back up! Much of the work after a flood involves ripping out the entire inside of people’s homes and it looks like now it’s time to do some repairs. Power tools scare the crap out of me so this could be an interesting experience.
Iowa isn’t exactly on the USA tourism trail and that’s exactly why I’m excited to go there. I didn’t even know where it was until a few days ago (although I also thought New England was a state up until six months ago, so my US geography isn’t exactly great) and I’m still not sure how I will get there but I’m pretty excited about it. If volunteering with Hands on in Cedar Rapids is anything like my other two experiences in Haiti and Bangladesh then it will be a guaranteed good time.
If anyone is in the area and wants to meet up, get in touch!
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