More Road Blocks

"A successful person does not do great things. He does small things in a great way."

            The first thing we did today was meet boss man Wycliffe (the contractor) and foreman Elvis in our own hotel conference room. The matter of discussion was the replacement of the tank roofs and other miscellaneous tasks that he thought his company should be compensated for. At first, he offered a number that was definitely out of our range, but after threatening to go to another contractor, he agreed to a reasonable amount and we were back in business.

            Feeling relieved, we headed back to the construction site at Kolunje. Little did we know that we were about to encounter an entire series of problems. Back at the hotel when we had reached an agreement, Elvis had called his workers and told them to take down the cement tank roofs. When we got to Kolunje, we realized there was some miscommunication...the workers had begun demolishing ALL the tank roofs, including the only tank that was actually functional (thank goodness the principal Gregory was not there today). When Elvis finally got to the site and saw this himself, he was all shook up.

            Soon after, we saw a car pull up to the site with one of the new 10,000 Liter plastic tanks to be installed. We thought the tank looked a little wide to fit on the tank bases that were currently in construction, so we decided to measure both to put our minds at ease. Unfortunately, we discovered that the tank really was too big. After bringing this up to Elvis, he agreed to widen the bases.

            There were also some problems with the gutters that the workers had begun installing. The first thing we noticed was that the workers were installing gutter clips into the new wooden fascia board before it had been painted, and were planning on painting around the clips. This increases the chances of the wood behind the clips rotting, and so we told them to wait for the paint. Additionally, we measured the slope of the gutter clips already installed on other buildings, and discovered that some of them were level, not sloped enough, or sloped the wrong way. The workers assured us that they would fix al of these problems by tomorrow.

            On the bright side, we received a visit from pastor Peter Odour, who showered us with fresh mangoes from his family farm. We also received a visit from Baria and her daughter, nephew, and nieces before heading back to the hotel.