Blisters and plumbing

Thursday June 18, 2009

Today was supposed to be the last day of digging. The three of us carried pipes up to the catchment before starting work. I stayed at Boa Camp’s section for most of the morning. We all dug as much as the quarters would allow. At the end of the day, only Boa Camp was not finished digging. They had a short section to finish the following morning. I returned to the house covered in dirt and with blisters all over my hands.

Kevin and Peter came over for the first time in days today. We learned that there is practically a ban on people visiting us in our house. We want to make many friends, but it’s not going to happen if people can’t come visit us. Mark is going to talk to the water committee about lifting these sanctions. If we don’t want someone coming over, we’ll tell them ourselves.

I made a great goal saving tackle on Kevin tonight, my best play yet. We also went out to a local bar with some friends from the village. 18 drinks for 6000 CFA, you can’t beat it J

Friday June 19, 2009

Rain was the theme of the day. It poured all morning, so we couldn’t begin to connect pipes until the afternoon. When we finally began connecting pipes, we ran into trouble. The first two slid together perfectly. But after that, we couldn’t get any pipes to join up with others. It was very frustrating. Mark called Mr. Benjamin and asked him to come to the village to see what we were doing incorrectly.

Saturday June 20, 2009

Saturday was another stressful and frustrating day. Benjamin, Josephat, and Simon the plumber came to inspect the work and diagnose our problems. We walked all the way to the catchment. Then, they decided they wanted to connect some pipes. At this point, I had to walk all the way back down to the village and back up to the stream crossing with supplies. So, I got my 10 km hike in before 11 AM. Simon showed us what we were doing wrong. We weren’t using enough glue. The glue acts as a lubricant to help the pipes slide over one another. (A 45 minute round trip to get supplies for a 2 minute demonstration) I’m not going to lie, I felt pretty stupid.

We returned to the house to discuss the cost of plumbing. We would need to buy additional supplies for air release valves. In addition, we talked with Simon about pricing up the labor to install all connections at the tanks. Simon said he would do the work for 250,000 CFA (~$500). He wanted to do the entire pipe laying with us in addition to the connections. We wanted him to only help us lay pipes for part of a day. If we were laying the pipes correctly, he could then focus on the connections. We figured at most, it would be 3 days of work. I couldn’t believe his price. It was outrageous for the amount of work he had to do. All the supplies were already purchased.

Simon would not budge from his 250,000 estimate. He also could not provide us a break out of how much he was charging for each section of the scope of work. At this point, I believed he was trying to pull a fast one and make tons of money from the whites. (Although he contested that he was helping not for money, but to “make a connection” with the program) In the end, we decided to lay the pipes ourselves and worry about acquiring a plumber sometime next week.