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Thursday, April 1, 1976, 9:00 pm - Day 65
I have been busy the last few days working on designing formwork for new culvert headwalls, which I want to try out. I have come up with the "perfect" designs 3 times so far, but I keep changing my mind as I work on it further. Yesterday afternoon I made a model of a proposed headwall for a two-foot culvert. It looked pretty good, but now it is all bent out of shape after traveling on my Honda. I now have the plans for a 54-piece formwork network, which will make the forms for 2 ft, 2.5 ft, 4 ft, double 2.5 ft, and double 4 ft culverts. Theoretically, but maybe not practically, I would like my carpenters to gather together all of the formwork that we have already, and use the wood from it to build my proposed forms. Also, I am hoping to build a model set of all of the proposed formwork but I have to wait for detergent boxes to be used up because it is the only supply of cardboard that I have. I am also a little hesitant about ordering new plywood to make the forms without trying to use what we have already, because a sheet of 4x8 plywood costs Le28.00.
I bought a machette a few days ago. It only cost Le1.00 and is the basic tool of every Sierra Leoneon. This afternoon I took it out into the woods between our house and the river. I was looking for some likely looking trees which I could use for poles to hold up my volleyball net. I found two of them with a "Y" about 12 feet off the ground and with a trunk about 4 inches thick at the bottom and 3 inches further up. I took my machette and worked at cutting them down. When I was finished my shirt looked like it had been dipped in the river and my hand had 5 blisters, two of which were already popped. The trip back to the house was no easy matter either. Each pole was 11 feet long and I could just manage them if I picked up the light end and moved off with it, letting the heavy end drag along the ground. Taking them one at a time and stopping to rest about 5 times during each trip I was able to get up over the 200 yeards to the volleyball court. After each trip, i stopped off in the house, sat down, and drank a quart of water. At the moment my body is very, very tired because it is not used to that kind of work. Some of the people here do the same kind of thing that I did, but they do it for all day, every day.
Friday, April 2, 1976, 8:00 am - Day 66
It rained last night, the hardest that it has rained so far. we must have gotten at least an inch of rain in the hour or so that it poured. I thought for sure we would be washed out this morning, but the water goes away quickly and it dries up fast also.
Sunday, April 4, 1976, 9:00 pm - Day 68
I've sort of had the "do nothing" blahs this weekend. I didn't go out to Biawala to check on the work either today or yesterday, even though I feel I should have because things aren't being done out there as efficiently as they could be. I feel it is my responsibility to try to fix things up, but I am getting alot of frustrations because I don't know all of the ropes yet. I am just beginning to learn what kinds of consequences there are when certain actions are done. Like my crew is working 12 hours a day and 7 days a week and I seem to find a great discrepency over the amount of work done some days compared to work done on other days. I would like to assume that they get the same amount of work done every day, but I can't. I am considering cutting some of their hours off, but I am hesitant to because I don't know all of the factors involved. I would need to know how far away the workers live and how they get to work every day and if it would be alright to stop some of the workers days at 8 hours and maybe not have them work weekends. One complication that I know of is that they want to work as much as they can because they need the overtime pay to be able to get by. Taking away their overtime greatly reduces their pay, which is good for the cost watchers, but bad for my workers.
Monday, April 5, 1976, 5:00 pm - Day 69
Transporting materials seems to be what is holding us up. Too much of the crew's time is used up just waiting for things to arrive so that they can use them. We have one tipper (dump truck) assigned to us, and with it we need to get culvert sections, cement, stone, sand, backfill material, and also transport all of the workers to the different sites. We use a tipper load of pipe each day, and each load takes him 6 hours to bring. That is half of the day gone right there. I'm thinking about just having them work for 5 or 6 days a week and have the tipper working 7. This way I think we could do the same amount of work in less time because we would be getting rid of alot of the time wasted by waiting for the materials.
Tuesday, April 6, 1976, 8:00 pm - Day 70
Rainstorms here are really amazing. They begin with alot of lightning but very little thunder. Next, a big dark cloud appears and slowly approaches overhead. As it comes nearer, a great wind blows and you can sit and hear its great roar gradually increase until it sounds like a great gale, and the branches and leaves are flapping madly. Next the rain starts and doesn't waste any time in turning into a downpour. It can sound deafening on a tin roof and in an hour can drop over an inch of rain. So far it hasn't lasted much longer than that, and it doesn't waste any time in stopping either. When it stops, the wind dies at the same time and everything is very quiet again, but the lightning could still be seen for a long time to come.
It rained last night and it is raining at this moment tonight. I think that the closest thing that I could think of to the sound of the rain and wind would be what you hear when you stand next to a giant waterfall or a spillway of a large dam. Also, being in a tunnel when a train came through would be close.
I got a package of watermelon seeds from home last Friday and on Saturday morning I spaded up some soil and planted them. This afternoon I counted 9 little plants that had just come up out of the ground. It seems too early, but they were in rows and spaced like how I planted them and I took care to throw out all of the other plant life, so I think that they must be little watermelon plants all about a quarter inch long. I didn't have to water them last night and I won't have to tonight either. I know that they will get enough water. I just hope that they don't get too much. I made the rows high with deep valleys inbetween them so i hope that is sufficient to keep them from getting flooded out!
Wednesday, April 7, 1976, 3:00 pm - Day 71
Those little plants that I counted yesterday were not watermelon plants after all. When I checked again this afternoon, I counted 13 little plants which I am positive are little watermelon plants because they looked exactly like the picture on the package. I pulled all of the other plants out. After only 4.5 days, 13 out of 117 seeds have managed to send shoots above the surface.
Wednesday, April 7, 1976, 10:00 pm - Day 71
This afternoon, after only 1600 miles, I finally got around to adjusting some things on my motorcycle which were supposed to be done after the first 500 miles. most of the things were still in adjustment and the ones that I did change were only a very small amount. The amazing thing is that when I finished fixing everything and had put my motorcycle back together and then tried to statr it 0 it wouldn't start. I tried and tried and tried, but I was getting nothing out of it. I even tried to push start it but that didn't work either. Skip came out and tried also but still nothing. I guess I really fixed it. Tomorrow morning I will take it apart and try again, since I can't go anywhere until it is fixed anyway.
Thursday, April 8, 1976, 11:00 pm - Day 72
Well, this morning I went out there and redid everything that I did yesterday and found everything to be okay. But still it wouldn't run. I managed to get Chuck, one of the engineers from the other house, to stop and have a look at my motorcycle. He rechecked everything again but we still couldn't find anything wrong. Finally, after trying different spark plugs and everything, he decided to try sanding the contact points. I then tried to start it and it started first time. It seems amazing that just a little sanding could make that much difference, but it did.
I still didn't manage to get out to Biawala today, and I spent the rest of my time cutting out cardboard formwork for my new culvert headwall design. I think that I have finally got all of the bugs out of my design and I drew it up neatly with a carbon copy. I also figured out how much stone, sand, and cement that would be needed for each of the different headwall types.
I counted my watermelon plants and there were 48 this morning and 63 this afternoon. I think that when I have to thin them out I will try to transplant them onto a fourth row, because I don't really cherish the idea of throwing away good watermelon plants.
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