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.

The pipes arrive...

Tuesday June 16, 2009

There was no community work today. However, that didn’t mean a day of rest. We traveled up to Carifu Quarter’s section of the line to inspect their work. Their quarter head hoped we could find an alternate path that avoided many of the rocks they were hitting. No such path existed. So, we told the quarter head to dig as deep as physically possible in that section of the line. I guess that’s the disadvantage of having only manual sources of labor. A storm in the afternoon transformed our street into a small river.

A surprise was waiting for us after dinner. Despite the terrible roads, the pipe and supplies were in the village. It took the villagers a short time to unload the truck. After unloading, the truck got stuck in the mud. A small contingent of villagers pushed and pulled until the truck was free.

Wednesday June 17, 2009

Our first task of the day was to move all the pipes from the soccer field into the school house. Our small group worked quickly and we put the last pipe in the classroom by 8 AM. To celebrate, we headed off to the chairman’s place for a free beer. Only in college and Cameroon is it acceptable to drink beer at 8 AM.

Since we had no other work to be done on the pipeline, we stopped at the storage tanks to assist the carpenter in mixing/placing concrete. Mr. Willie is the carpenter for the tanks. He is a very knowledgeable man when it comes to construction practices in Cameroon. It’s amazing what these men can do without machines. All the concrete ingredients are mixed on the ground. Then, the buckets of fresh concrete were passed via a line of workers up to the top of the tank. Other men placed and finished the concrete. The result was a tank that wouldn’t look much out of place in the US.

We played some more football today. The game came down to penalty kicks after tying in regulation. The goalkeeper made an excellent save on my shot. Mark was the only one of the three whites to score in penalty kicks. In the evening, all of us (including Carine) visited the local “movie theater.” This movie theater is nothing like those in the states. The small room was filled with benches that faced a 19” TV. The place was packed when we arrived. The cost was 50 CFA (about 10 cents) for one movie or 100 CFA for the double feature. (We arrived too late to see the first half)

The movie itself was a Nigerian soap opera. (Cameroon is not yet developed enough to have their own movie production studios) Like all soap operas, Nigerian soaps are overdramatic, terribly acted, and poorly written. In addition, the sound quality is marginal to put it nicely. Doors close with loud bangs and voices go from inaudible to booming in seconds. Overall, I find the films to be hilariously bad.

The plot of this particular film centered on a man who was dating three girls at the same time. The girls happened to be best friends and when they found out the truth, things got nasty. A girl was raped, someone was killed, and people were thrown in jail. But in the end, everything turned out just dandy. The good guy got the girl and the bad guy was put behind bars.

Left: Standing in front of a felled Boma tree near the storage tank