Two days in the life of a volunteer woodworker

Yesterday, I arrive at work with a fellow employee. We were expecting to go to a worksite in Poitiers, the capital of Vienne, the department in France. I live in Parthenay, 30 kms away in Deux Sevres, another department of the same region (Poitou Charente).

Instead, at last minute, the boss says we go to another worksite in the local town (Thenezay, where the Enterprise Soko Bois, who I am working with at the moment).

"comme l'habitude" Dominique (the experienced guy I am working with this week, the second week of my 2 week volunteer interim) says. Noone seems to have a good opinion about our boss (Jean is his name, and his attention seems to be scattered around, somewhere inbetween a cold bottle of good whisky and making money building and repairing and rennovating buildings. His issue seems to be a lack of ability to properly communicate, or he simply doesn't give a fuck about much except personal success).

The worksite ends up being a nursery school. They have their dining hall (cafeteria for little ones) with a problem. We walk to the window and notice that the floor is unstable and something is the matter below. We rip up the synthetic floor sheet and the panels of agglomerate (panels composed of wood derivitives) to find that the whole floor is rotten with huge mushrooms and the beams are totally devastated. So we spend the day ripping up and hammering and picking and shovelling and chainsawing to do a patch-up job (because the owner is reselling the school to the government in a year, and he doesn't give a fuck after that).

'On va cacher la misere' is what's it called, when you repair something in a fashion that only temporarily solves the problem, for someone in the future to deal with, somehow (considering the short-sightedness current in many people when they consider their actions and consuming habits, probably with exactly the same strategy).

So Dominique gave me a ride home (he lives 30 meters from my apartment I am sharing with two classmates in a low-cost housing area), and we went to sleep under the assumption that we will totally rebuild a section of 2x-6 meters of the floor, and dig holes and install a passive ventilation system (wood, whether it is in a wall or under a roof or the floor, if it is not subject to a current of dry air, risks to develop humidity, and following that fungus or termites, who both love stale, humid air).

This morning, i'm outside Dominique's driveway at 7:30 am, as he reverses out of his driveway with his 15 year old daughter in the passenger's seat. I hop in, we drop her off at school nearby, and we are off to Thenezay, where SokoBois is. In the workshop we run in to le chef d'atelier (the manager of the workshop).

He tells us we are to show two other workers (Allain and Patrick) what needs to be done for the floor at the primary school down the road, and after we are to load our van and go do the job at Poitiers. We ask for more details, like the address, directions, where we can park, if the workshop currently contains tools and materials we need.

We get a few things, but can't find a few things neither. We speak to the designer and he gives us a rough idea of where the apartment is, and then we get the secretary to find us a map on the internet of the downtown where the apartment is.

Ok we are off before we know it. Can't get a hold of Jean (the boss), and 'on part avec our bit et une couteau' (a French saying literally translating 'we leave with our dick and a knife', but means more or less that we take off towards a goal with basically nothing).

We don't know the address, Dominique hardly knows the city, and we enjoy the scenery and laugh it all off a bit during the ride. 'Il faut pas prendre la tete', we reassure ourselves, and say we will do what we can, and that's it, even if that means turning around and coming back to the workshop if things don't work out (the French phrase literally means 'you don't have to take the head', but means don't need to worry or stress about something).

We get to Poitiers and make a few circles on one-way streets and call the boss until we find it. There are loads of people all around (mostly students: university town). It is nice out, mounting towards 23 degrees Celsius. We avoid a huge bus on our little street and manage to park the van under the building. We call the boss again for the code to get in. He doesn't know (another example of his mastery of organisation). We call the designer who gave us directions (Jean-Paul), and he gives us a number. The number doesn't work, and the door doesn't budge. Dominique enters the store front which comprises of the ground floor of the apartment to ask a guy for the code to get in as I start unloading tools.

We quickly unload everything (seven big, heavy wood-framed windows, a perfurator for piercing concrete, big tool box, some big plastic tarps, a circular saw, cordless drill, and two buckets full of cartridges of silicone and wood glue).

We leave everything in the hallway, and search for the way to get to the fourth floor, where our job is.
 We climb the steep wooden stairwell, find an empty floor, get to the third, again, big empty room, could comprise of at least five apartments if it was divided up by walls. The stairwell ends, and so we find another one at the other end around the corner. This is a little old stairwell of wood planks. At the top is a door. An ungodly odour tingles the nostrils. We open the door and find shit everywhere.

Literally there is pigeon shit on every surface horizontal and vertical, up in the shafters near the roof, and there are pigeons flying about everywhere in a panic. Broken windows at ground floor. I count seven. Those are the seven windows we are going to replace with new windows. The floor is a 5 centimeter carpet of white grey and black pigeon shit. Dominique says he was told we are to clean it up, but he looks doubtful.

He passes a broom around and clear a pathway through the shit from the door to the stairway until the first window, and clears a square under the two nearest windows. He hands me the broom and I continue to make a path and squares under each of the five remaining windowsills, while he goes down to ground floor to bring the tools we need to remove the old windows (a little hammer, a  big flat-headed screwdriver, and a crowbar).

He arrives and I watch as he pops off the two window panes from the frame of the first window, breaks the two hinges on each side of the frame, and with the crowbar rips the window frame out of the opening in the wall. Behind is a little iron fence and a light grill, a sort of safety device, so people and things don't fall out of the window.

He hands me the tools and I continue on the next window. I remove it and start on the third. Here the grill is broken beside where I put the screwdriver to break a hinge. That means the hammer or a chunk of wood or the screwdriver could fall out of the window and down onto the sidewalk below.

And so the screwdriver skids off the surface of the wood frame as I hit it with the hammer, and actually falls out the window down into the streets below. I watch it fall out of my hand and down onto the sill and then over the edge in slow motion, but my motion was even slower. Too slow. I hear a loud crack outside and below the window. I recognise instantly that it is the sound of the screwdriver hitting the sidewalk. I register that this means that it didn't fall onto someone. Good. I immediately put down the hammer and peek my head out the window and look down to see what the result of the screwdriver. I see a bunch of shapes and colours down on the street below, and register the word 'POLICE' written along the chest of the vests of two men in blue looking up at me. One makes a complicated facial gesture, kind of like 'Yes, I saw that screwdriver fall out of the window you're standing at, and that was not a good thing'. A kind of mean smirk.

Dominique is nearby working on the window opening where I already removed the old window, and he says something like 'WAIT! (recognisingly) what was that noise? Did you drop something? (Yes, I made the screwdriver fall out the window) OH NO!

He pops his head out the window and sees people walking by but two cops in dark blue vests over light blue button up shirts, one bald and the other with a dark blue baseball cap. He makes for the door to the stairway and heads downwards. I consider for a split second to continue working and let him deal with it, but then make for the door through the pigeon shit and follow him. We get outside down on ground floor just as a fellow employee Florian (who was working in the area and finished his job, and had intended to come over and help us do ours, but also to bring a cordless perforator, because there was no power in the building (except for the storefront) and not even a plug).

We pass by him and approach the police. The senior policeman begins to tell us that we could have killed someone, that we should have taken safety precautions and put a plastic tarp over the windows so that nothing falls out (at this moment our plastic tarp is sitting just behind the door in the storageroom/hallway on the ground floor folded up in a pile). He says that we should immediately put up some tarps or something, and he demands our worksite permit ( a paper giving authorisation to SokoBois to work on this worksite). Dominique explains that we don't have one. The cop says they will return in the afternoon and if they see we haven't the permit nor taken the safety precautions, they will close the worksite.

They take off and Dominique goes over and explains the story to Florian, and then they unload the cordless perforator and a few other things, and Florian takes off. He ain't going to help us, he is needed back in Thenezay. Dominique explains to me that we don't have a worksite permit.

They cost money, and take time, and Jean doesn't bother with them, normally getting away with it. If the cops shutdown the worksite, our boss will be caught without a work permit, and that means he's screwed. Well, we will continue with our job anyway, and if we are shut down, we are shut down, and return home. It's eleven thirty am (half an hour to lunch at a restaurant!) and that means we have no longer the right to be parked under the building. We get in and search the streets around for somewhere to park. After ten minutes we find a spot outside of an elementary school. It is with a sort of parking meter, but we don't pay, and just leave the car. If it get's towed, its insured, and not my car, he says. We get in and drive off to eat.