Benches for Sitting, and Painting Long Fences

The hope was that, Tom Sawyer-style, we would get other people to paint the long metal fence for us. Unlike Tom’s fence, however, ours was not a simple one-color picket fence. It was two colors, with very intricate designs on it that required a little more skill than simply slapping on the paint.

Not your typical Tom Sawyer Fence that needs to be painted

But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself. Let me catch you up with what’s going on.

Part of being a volunteer means doing projects for your community. In order to prepare us for that part of service, the Peace Corps required us all to do a community project during training.

My group met up one day to discuss the project we wanted to do. I missed the meeting because I was attending a baptism (which I’ll talk about another time.) My group came up with a few ideas, which included:

• Painting a mural on an old, unused building behind the school near the soccer field, to encourage sport.
• Cleaning up the track and soccer field to make it a more appealing place to play.
• Taking away the wood and garbage from between the wings of the school and creating a more welcoming space.
• Building a bench or two for the bus stop, so people wouldn’t have to squat in the shade to wait for the bus.

We met with the mayor of our town, and with the help of a translator, conveyed these ideas. He was completely open to anything, and told us that he was just happy to have us here; he didn’t expect us to do anything for him or for the village. But since we insisted that we wanted to do something, to thank them for their hospitality, he gave us a couple additional suggestions for projects.

Options for our community project: 1. Clean up memorial. 2. Paint fence. 3. Make benches for bus stop. 4. Paint a mural. 5. Get rid of huge wood pile. 6. Clean up soccer field.

One idea was to paint the fence around the War memorial across the street from the mayor’s office. He said he would supply any materials we would need.

We decided to take on this project. We also decided to tackle the bench project. Not only that, but in addition to painting the fence, we decided that the inside grounds of the memorial could use a little sprucing up. Maybe pull some weeds???

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There were a few delays in getting started, because the mayor ended up going out of town, and we were unable to get the necessary materials when we needed them. All of the training villages were supposed to present the results of their project on a certain central day, and on that day we had not officially started our project yet. But, VOCHINCH!!! We proudly stood in front of the others and told them our grand visions of community service.

Four days later….

We got to the mayor’s office, ready to start our project, only to find the doors tightly locked and the mayor nowhere in sight. Half an hour later, we found out that the supplies we were looking for were at Collin’s house—a fellow Trainee! (He had no idea, either.)

We finally got the three cans of paint (we had asked for at least six), six paint brushes (we should have asked for more), sand paper (Was it really necessary? We’re still not sure.), three bottles of paint thinner (that at first glance looked like vodka bottles), and nails for the benches. The original fence was a grayish-blue color with gold trim.

The two paint colors we received were:

1. the same grayish-blue
2. metallic silver

The mayor showed up and we voiced our concern about the small amount of paint, and the non-gold color. He seemed unconcerned, told us to start painting with what we had, and if we needed more, there was more paint that he would get to us.

And finally, just over an hour after we had planned, we got started.

As we worked, kids from the community started to materialize. We had them help sand down the rusty metal, gave some of them turns with the paint brushes, and showed them how to pull weeds.

Community Project in Progress, cleaning up memorial grounds and painting the fence

It was all hot, dirty, tedious work. The most fun appeared to be the painting, but it was also the most exacting, and (let’s face it) some of the kids were just a little too young or inexperienced to be wielding a paint brush! But, being a “community” project, it didn’t feel right to forbid them from helping, so we practiced our patience and teaching skills and did our best to let everyone be included.

Some of the boys also started sorting through and carrying wood, to be used for the benches. We had a couple men from the community volunteer to help with that project as well.

The boys carry big logs from the school to "Brian-i tun" in hopes of making benches out of them.

We took a break halfway through the day because it became much too hot to work. By the end of the evening, we had completed…. a grand total of 1/4 of the entire fence… in just ONE color! (And a few weeds were pulled, and one bench was installed inside the memorial—twice, because some men decided they didn’t like the first location.) This was after working for about 6 hours!

We quit for the day right before it started raining.

Yep, this was definitely more than just a one-day project.

———–

Let’s quickly visit a couple of the other training groups’ community projects:

• A fun day with a local orphanage involving all sorts of water games.
• An education hour in the school, teaching about washing hands and to not play with matches.

As training is busy enough, most projects didn’t last more than a day. What were we thinking???

———–

Our second night on the project we had a lot more people from the community out helping, including some of the men, so that was pretty cool! I enjoyed seeing so many people willing to help, especially since one thing we were striving for was “sustainability” of the project. And of course we had a passle of younger kids also there, again wanting to be involved in everything whether or not they were actually good at it.

Details of the fence we had to paint.

By the end of the second day, we had about 3.5 more fence sections to finish with gray paint, then we need to do all the metallic painting, and after that, touch-ups. (We had received more paint, so we were no longer worried about running out.) As far as the grounds, we had almost all of the weeds pulled up from the sidewalk inside the memorial. But there was still a bit of work to be done there. We worked until dark, about 3.5 hours.

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Third night: More weeds pulled, finished the gray paint. Someone bought us ice cream. Lots of people helping out. Ran out of paint thinner. (We had to use a lot of it, because the weather was super hot and was drying out and thickening the paint almost before it got to the fence.) Worked until dark, about 3 hours.

Fourth night: Received three more bottles of thinner. Super hot day. Grounds are looking great. Started on the metallic paint. It covers up the gold surprisingly well, but the paint is tricky. It’s very runny, and sets quickly. If you try to touch up paint that has already dried, it turns gray and loses its metallic sheen. Worked until dark, about 3 hours.

Very emotionally exhausting day for me. Did not feel like painting, or mingling with others. An interesting crowd showed up at the memorial: all the older, unmarried men. “Yeghbors.” They talked a lot.

FIFTH NIGHT. It’s very, very hot. No kids are allowed to paint, because they are too slow and make too much of a mess. Worked until just past dark, about 3.5 hours. VERTCH!!!! (Finished!) Yayayayayayayayaaaaa!!!!!

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Finished Memorial Grounds

Finished silver Fence Spikes

Finished Fence Detail

Was it a hard project? Absolutely? Were we exhausted? Yes, no question. Did we ask ourselves why we had put ourselves through this? Hundreds of times. BUT…

Was it sustainable? Well, it won’t get rusty for quite some time. Did we involve the community? Most definitely! Are we proud of our work? Yes. Every single time we meet “gyughapetarani mot,” (near the mayor’s office) or walk past in the street, or think about the words, “community project,” we can’t help but pat ourselves on the back for all our hard work.

Finished Fence around the Memorial

P.S. Don’t ask about the bus stop benches quite yet…