Aug 07 2008
efficiency in motion
Visa® has a series of commercials that show a retail setting and people checking out by using their credit cards. When they pan out, the scene is much like clockwork… lots of moving parts in sequence and all dependent on one another. Any change in the sequence throws off the entire operation — such as using cash in the case of the commercials.
Our second service project was more concrete work at CAI, a school for children with cerebral palsy. They are adding some rooms to the school, and we were there to mix concrete and pour it into the forms they had created for the cinder block frame. We learned how to mix raw materials manually to create concrete when we were in Los Guidos. Here we were provided a mixer — that certainly would have been nice a day ago!
Once we learned the mixture proportions and the process, we were in business. Our foreman was Wilbur, a native Costa Rican that has worked for Charlie about 2 years. Wilbur knew about as much English as we knew Spanish, so Adam had a good conversation with him on the way to the work site.
In the midst of the work, I stepped back an looked at what reminded me of those Visa® commercials… efficiency in motion. Twelve people all doing something that the next person depended on. True teamwork.
-RB