In 2015, Jimmy Carter had brain cancer. In 2019, he broke his hip. That same year, at age 95, he fell at home requiring 14 stitches. Despite his injuries, he showed up the next day, to help build houses for the Habitat for Humanity. Recently turning 98, President Carter is still an active volunteer.

Jimmy Carter walks a little stiffly and has a slight hunch in his back. He is 93 years old. He now prefers to use a table saw instead of a hammer. But the 39th President of the United States and his wife still travel around the world for one week every year to build houses by hand for Habitat for Humanity, an international housing organisation. The Carters were measuring wood lengths for a new patio on a job site in Mishawaka, Indiana, on a Thursday in late August while wearing blue hard hats.

Carter is the only President in modern times to have left the White House and gone back home. He thinks that home is a powerful place. The couple still lives in the two-bedroom ranch house they built in Plains, Georgia, in 1961. This is in contrast to the jet-setting and making money that his friends did after they left office. They still make their own meals and go to the Baptist church in their neighbourhood, where Carter teaches Sunday school. Carter will never be found giving a speech for a hundred thousand dollars to an investment bank.

In this South Bend suburb, 23 vinyl-sided homes are being built on a lot that used to be empty. This morning is bright and clear. Cleora Taylor, a single mother of four who is 36 years old, will soon own the Carters’ current building project and pay for it with a mortgage that doesn’t charge interest. Carter says in a nice country accent, “We’re Christians, and that lets us put our religious beliefs into action.” The speaker said, “It is very hard for wealthy people like us to bridge the huge gap between us and people who have never had a decent place to live.”

Carter’s modesty might seem like a slap in the face to people who put a higher value on money or fame. He is adamant, though, that he doesn’t judge people whose goals are different from his own. He says that we can do what we want with our lives. “It’s what we like to do,” He thinks it’s frustrating that inequality in the U.S. is getting worse. He blames partisan gerrymandering, voter intimidation, and the “stupid” Citizens United ruling on campaign finance by the Supreme Court in 2010. He said that this “pumped a lot of money into the political system, turning our country into an oligarchy that depends on money instead of a democracy that depends on the votes of each citizen.”

Since 1983, the Carters have been building for Habitat for Humanity. He says that they will go as long as they can. Carter beat cancer in 2015, but his 91-year-old wife Rosalynn now uses a cane because she had surgery this year. They have worked on building projects in 14 countries and 21 states, from Mississippi to Manila and many other places in between. Since Donald Trump was elected president, the fact that they went to rural Indiana in 2018, right in the middle of America’s most watched heartland, feels especially meaningful. They came as a favour to local architect LeRoy Troyer, who is 80 years old and has been in charge of their building projects all over the world for the past 33 years. His family, the Carters, call him “boss.”