He was 95 years old, a black eye and 14 points on the forehead. But Jimmy Carter still had a project to complete.
On 1 October 2019, the former president of the United States reached a historic milestone: he became the first American president ever to make 95 years.
A few days later, however, there came an accident that would convince many people to stop.
One Sunday morning, when he was preparing to go to church in his house in Plains, Georgia, Carter fell and hit his forehead against a sharp edge.
The doctors had to apply 14 points above his eyebrow. The left eye swollen and filled with bruises.
For many it would have been time to cancel every effort.
It was just a bad time for Carter.
That same evening he went on stage at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.
He walked with a stick, had a white bandage on his forehead and did not try to hide the consequences of the fall.
In front of the public he began to tell the reason for his black eye: a fall, some point and a precise decision, that of being there anyway.
To accompany him and his wife Rosalynn, then 90-year-old, there were also country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.
The next morning Carter was already at work.
Despite the swelling and red sign under the bandage, he reached the Nashville yard, led a moment of prayer for the volunteers and then took the tools.
It was his thirty-sixth project with Habitat for Humanity.
Together with Rosalynn he would spend that week working on the construction of porticos for a project destined to contribute to the realization of twenty-one new homes for families of the area.
But that scene wasn't an exception.
His story with Habitat began in 1984, a few years after leaving the White House. Since then he has chosen to devote time and energy to the construction and repair of houses for people who needed it.
Over the decades, the spouses Carter collaborated with over 100,000 volunteers and helped build or recover more than 4,000 homes worldwide.
One of the most significant moments came in 2006, when Carter returned to Lonavala, India, to participate in the construction of one hundred houses.
It was a special region for him: right there his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, had served in the Peace Corps at the age of 70.
For Jimmy Carter that experience was a return to the origins, a sort of "back home".
At the age of ninety-five, with a wound still fresh on his forehead, he continued to prove the same idea that he had driven most of his public life.
There are people who stop when obstacles come.
And then there are people who consider them just a reason to move on.
Carter did not build houses to receive applause:
He did it because, according to him, a house does not build itself.
And someone had to start putting the first brick.