Inakwane,
Things tick along over here. The temperature is in the high thirties during the day but in the 20s at night. It’s supposed to be cooler than this now according to the locals and there are is concern that if winter is hot then the rains may not come later in the year. The winds are becoming more frequent and a fair bit of dust is blowing around the city.
Mainly from our site!
Ralph arrived safely last night and has crumbled under the stress already.
Not really but he has quite a few items on the list Dave and I have done and is keen to get cracking.
The 2 pads from Thursday are busy curing. The one that Dave and I pumped water onto, and covered with hessian is, unsurprisingly, in much better condition than the one that the guys did the Niger way. This involves leaving it uncovered and unwetted after finishing until the next day and then placing sand on the top and wetting the sand. At a push they’ll put hessian on the next morning and wet that.
We’ve now showed them the difference, explained why we need to wet it as soon as we’ve finished and this now appears to have been understood now as the contractor is today doing it our way.
We continued pouring pads yesterday. We started with one mixer, the other having again broken down. By about 10, the second mixer was up and running again. For about 40 minutes, then the whole rigmarole of calling the supplier to get him out to fix it again got underway. The bloody thing has been stop/go all day so we have told the contractor that if it doesn’t get properly fixed today, the supplier will need to bring another one.
One of our cages has moved out of alignment during the pour today. It was set up off the surveyors peg and stringline but when we checked it as the guys were floating it off it has moved about 50mm. We told the contractor that he needs to come up with a solution to this, or the whole pad comes out and is re-done at their cost.
We could come up with a fix ourselves but it is important that know what they’ve done and how it happened and we need them to take ownership of their mistakes or it will happen again and again
We’ll probably just widen the shutters for the next pour.
We are getting faster though- 2 pads yesterday, 3 pads today. This is a total of 16.2m3 which is 33% up on the day before but we’ve now run out of materials so the plan for today and Sunday is all hands to the screening of gravel and stockpiling etc and also making shutters and tying steel in preparation for the strip footings pours. We’re also doing some maintenance on the mixers so hopefully by Monday morning we’ll be ready to crack into the concrete placing again.
Our controller from the national lab continues to diligently check all the quantities of aggregate, sand, cement and water as you can see from the photo. He’s the one in the foreground as the mixers pump out more concrete and the guys are busy placing.
Yesterday while I was waiting for someone who was running on Niger time, a couple of guys started yelling “Hey, Mr. white man across the street”.
So obviously I put my best “piss off and leave me alone” face on and carried on walking but they crossed over and tapped me on the shoulder.
They turned out to be two guys from Sierra leone who have come to Niger to set up a new business venture. They have 500,000 Euros to invest but needed someone to act as guarantor for them at the bank and thought I fitted the bill perfectly. They also needed someone to go into partnership with and invest a small amount just to show commitment to the venture.
Obviously, I was very eager to give them my bank details but as I couldn’t remember them, I gave them Paul’s credit card instead.
We have our drivers wedding tonight which will be interesting. Most of the guys on site are going and Dave and I have both had some suits hand made in the local style- loose fitting trousers and a baggy shirt down to your knees!
There might be photos of this available to the highest bidder.
That’s all for now,
Me
