The Helper

I. is an anarchist from Brazil who knows only a smidgen of English. He's stuck here for the week because that's how long it is before an affordable flight can get him home. He's a carpenter and an organizer of no mean accomplishment. It's been a pleasure for me to meet this excellent fellow, who is already well known to several of my friends in the neighborhood.

Here in Philly I. has been been put to work in the house I've been sweating and slaving away in for the past week. In this picture he's very carefully scraping and priming some baseboards. But the high heat (100 F as I took the picture), the pressure (on me) of the job, and the facts of language and unfamiliar materials has brought our wandering friend so far out of his element that he's an unskilled laborer here, not the can-do dynamo he is at home. He took him an hour to do what to me is ten minutes' work.

This was both a happy acquaintance and a nostalgic moment for me. I've been in his shoes quite precisely, as an immigrant in France several years ago before i returned to the US. It's an odd feeling, awkward, full of smiles and lost time, not recommended for a shy person. I. rolls with it well, just as I did.