Daybreak found materials and supplies piled along the perimeter. The battalion was holstered, armed, edgy. Some stood in the big tent receiving orders, incanting prayers. Others moved near their battle stations, oblivious to pelting rain that turned their battlefield into swampy red muck. They had seven days to stifle the enemy’s advance and strengthen what this nation stood for – opportunity and freedom to be all one could be. With a peppy “OhYee! “ they swarmed into the heat, muck and rain.
In this one battle America’s arsenal rained on the enemy over 897,380 bullets, fired 13,200 artillery rounds and sprayed over 1000 gallons of liquefied gasses. Some hesitatively called it a religious war. No matter the motive, the battalion hammered hard and fast.
Every year for the past 20+ years similar large and small strike forces have hit the breeding ground of terrorists, thugs, ner-do-wells – and the unlearned who breed them.
Here, however, the slammed and gunned bullets, -- were nails, artillery rounds -- pieces of lumber, liquefied gasses -- gallons of paint, holsters -- carpenters aprons. Call it a religious war. Call it the Theology of the Hammer
On the seventh day the poverty, ignorance, lack of opportunity that the dark side thrives on for its recruits had lost another village of 22 families to opportunities hinged around more secure shelter, growth and learning.
Despite 4” of La Grange, Georgia rain on June 7th , over 600 volunteers dug in to complete 19
homes from the foundation up in seven days.
Initiated in 1984, after glib politician Jimmy Carter asked if there was
anything he could do to help the rebuilding of a New York slum, opportunist
Habitat Founder Millard Fuller celebrated the 20th Jimmy Carter Work
Project.(JCWP) This JCWP found 4,000
volunteers building homes in partnership with 92 new homeowners’ families
during the week of June 6 -13 in the cities of Anniston, Ala., and LaGrange and
Valdosta, Ga.
There is neither a dearth of politicians preaching about the need to
eradicate extremists breeding poverty nor of those calling for volunteering as
the means to do it. Too often they talk
the good talk, but hammer home their myopic views with costly bombs and
weapons. Too often they forget the son
born unto a carpenter who moved the world to do unto one’s neighbor as one
would have done unto oneself. Waging war
wearing an apron and swinging a carpenter’s hammer is, in the long run, more
effective than crucifying the enemy with sharper precision bombs.
Healthy Global Village habitat homes that replace hovels of cardboard,
cow dug and scraps surrounded by cesspools cost between $2,500 and $6,000. An American home like those built at JCWP
2003 average 1,100 square feet and cost about $50,000. Those homes eradicate the extremism that
costs the world incalculable warfare, grief, and money. Isn’t it smarter to nip evils in the bud –
in the poverty of the home, before the weeds grow?
From Habitat’s inception in 1976 by Millard and Linda Fuller through
July of 2003, Habitat will have built 200,000 homes. Impressive? Perhaps,
until you realize that 1/5th of the world (over a billion people)
live on less than a dollar a day and another fifth barely doubles that. Their shelter reflects it.
About 1/3rd of those 200,000 homes will have been built in
the US where Habitat’s motto captures the financial benefits such building
adds: “Rebuilding our tax base by
removing substandard housing.”
Impressive? Perhaps, until you
remember that too many Americans live in wretched housing that poorly grooms
them to compete in today’s increasingly concentrated world economy.
After completing the La Grange Blitz Build, I drove my tired body down
Pine tree lined Highway 280 to listen to a Jimmy Carter Sunday School Sermon in
Plains, Georgia. I pondered the country western song’s words twanging over the
radio:
“That’d be awl right.
If everybody had a little bigger piece of the pie
And a little lighter load to bear
That’d be awl-right…”
Gun wielding marshals are often the only way to deal with bullying,
active terrorists. But constant
back-hands across the other sides’ faces don’t build the foundation that ends
terrorism and stabilizes a world economy.
Hand-outs disappear. Hand-ups
people grasp. If we would only shock
and awe the world with hand-ups, imagine the national security and economic
growth it would hammer home.
Peoples’ homes are the school houses to a safer world. Build them and it will come.
By: Dwayne Hunn, Habitat’s Blitzkreig war
July 2, 2003
Mill Valley
consultant, writer and former Peace Corps Volunteer Dwayne Hunn, has also
completed Habitat Global Village builds in Sri Lanka and Fiji.