Oct 8, 2010
In his song “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” which was made popular again by the Coen brother’s movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” Harry McClintock sings of a hobo promised-land where “there ain’t no short-handled shovels.” Amen brother, there is nothing worse than a short-handled shovel. My back knows that all too well.
A missionary to Haiti for nearly 15 years, I have spent a lot of time with shovels. My favorite is the flat shovel. The broad, shallow blade of a flat shovel slides easily under a load. It picks up a much larger volume than its spade counterpart, which can dig in unexpectedly and veer right or left, dropping its load as it goes. This shovel is best for loading sand and gravel that has been dumped on a hard surface, such as a driveway or public road. It is also handy for mixing concrete by hand.
Spades are good for digging and breaking down piles in order to increase the yield of a flat shovel when loading an aggregate that time and weight have compacted. Spades are also helpful for cutting roots and dislodging rocks when you are digging trash holes in which to bury things you can’t use anymore. Unless you are in a tight space or shaping a hole from the inside, spades are also best long-handled.
Not all wheelbarrows are the same either. Like shovels, the best designed wheelbarrows have longer handles, at least long enough to allow you to walk comfortably without banging your shins into their rear braces. On the other hand, handles need to be short enough to make it possible to get the load up over the wheel without having to cock your arms too much.
The deeper the front of a wheelbarrow, the better. A deep front allows for the maximum forward load. In wheelbarrow physics, everything that is loaded over the wheel requires about half the energy to push as that which ends up at the back of the bucket. In fact, once you tip the load over the wheel, you can barely feel it. A deep front also helps keep the contents, especially liquid concrete, from sloshing out.
My wheelbarrow and shovel time has increased of late. Almost every hour of the day since Haiti’s earthquake, we have been hauling debris from our fallen walls to be crushed and used for building materials at sites around the school and neighborhood. This adds a lot of wheelbarrow and shovel work to our normal daily activities of picking up trash along the nearby national road, turning the compost, and cleaning our school.
I have no complaints. While the circumstance that brought this work on is very sad, working with shovels and wheelbarrows is spiritually and physically beneficial. The ardor of the work focuses the mind. It creates a proper perspective for compassionate, yet realistic contemplation of the massive devastation done by the earthquake to this already impoverished country and the tough, long road ahead to recovery. In this way, the work is cathartic, redemptive and constructive.
Shoveling and wheelbarrowing also keep my hands occupied. This removes the temptation to point fingers at others out of frustration over the dirge-like pace at which recovery naturally moves. Pointless blaming has become the distracting, and possibly destructive, pastime of more than a few of those from the international community who, invited or not, have taken on the leadership of the outside world’s effort to rebuild Haiti. I am grateful to have something to do in order to avoid being caught up in that subterfuge.
Daily bouts of hard labor also keep me constantly in contact with what it is going to take for this historically important, but environmentally devastated, country to recover and move forward, namely lots of hard work. I appreciate the daily reminder to not over intellectualize Haiti’s recovery and advancement.
While I sweat through my comparatively minor labors, I also have the chance to daydream. Released by the rhythm of my flat shovel scraping on the ground, I happily imagine that Haiti has just been given $5 billion dollars by the Unites States to fund WPA-style projects aimed at improving the country’s environment and infrastructure rather than bounce-back relief dollars—dollars that all too often go to international consultants companies rather than into the local economy. I dream of these funds being direct funds, uninhibited by mediating international organizations. Real dollars for Haiti, not near useless in-kind donations that are actually veiled stimulus packages for the donating nation. Then my trusty shovel skips and the dream goes with the lost rhythm.