Tuesday, July 13, 1976, 8:00 pm - Day 168

Wednesday, August 4, 1976, 3:00 pm - Day 190

All of the rest of my workers got layed off a week ago. Even my supervisors, which they were saying we were going to keep on, were layed off. It hit them pretty hard, considering that they had only about 1.5 days notice. They should all be back for the training school in Bo next week.

Working out at Biawala with just me and the communal labor was a real experience for me. I've found that getting work out of the communal labor for extended periods of time is an almost impossible task. Even so, we managed to get a respectable amount of work done. I layed my first culvert pipe. Before, I always left that up to my masons, but this time I was on my own. I did alright too. The only bad part was when it came to mortaring the different pipe sections together with concrete. I had to use my hands and ended up with all of the skin removed from my fingertips, which always seems to happen when I put my hands in cement. The communal laborers asked me where my trowel was and I showed them my hand with the fingers extended and pointed to each one in turn, saying "T - R - O - W - L - trowel", which got a laugh out of everyone. This meant that I was going to use my hand as a trowel. This is an old Sierra leone joke and has been told to me many a time, but as "S - P - O - O - N - spoon", meaning that they use their hand for eating with. I just thought that I would change it a bit and throw it back at them.

Sunday, August 8, 1976, 3:00 pm - Day 194

Training school starts tomorrow. I was just looking back through my journal and I see that I seem to have failed to mention it before. I guess I'll do it now. - Consider it mentioned. No really - This training school is a 4-week program which we, the CARE engineers, will be teaching to them, the CARE Sierra Leone workers. This will be the first time for the school and also the first time for me as a teacher. You might say that I am a bit nervous, and getting more so all of the time. I will be instructing for 4 subjects for a total of 13 hours of class time. It's not really that much, but it seems plenty to me at the moment. All four subjects are concerning the type of work that I have been doing so far.

One is about concrete and how to mix it and how to work with it, and what to put it in and what not to put it in, and what you can do with it, and ... (have I used up 5 lectures yet? - I hope so!)

The second course I have is on skewed-pipe design and installation. Skewed pipes are culverts that don't cross the road perpendiculary but cross at some other angle (skewed). There is not much else to say about it, but I have to stretch this out to 3 lectures.

My third course is also 3 lectures long. It is about Pipe flow line and Invert depth of a pipe. This means that I will be talking about how deep we should bury the culvert pipes, and why and how all of the different factors that enter in.

My fourth and last course is concerning ditch digging. They are allowing me two lectures for this one. I was the one who insisted that they include this course because I felt that it was necessary, since maybe one third of the worker's time will be spent with digging ditches. I've just been thinking that it would be good to have a hand-excavation contest, where I would set up a series of 1-cubic yard sections and give each contestant one section and a pick and a shovel with which to dig. The first person to dig all of his cubic yard and also toss all of his dirst past a certain line would be the winner. Everyone would be required to finish their own cubic yard and their times will be taken. We will then all sit down and discuss how much a person (your average communal laborer, for example) could be expected to complete in one day if they had adequate supervision and organization. This is important, because at the moment I don't think that we are getting any more than one half to one cubic yard per day from the communal labor, while I think that they are capable of doing at least two cubic yards per day.

Tuesday, August 10, 1976, 9:00 pm - Day 196

All of the testing was oral because alot of the workers can't read or write, or if they do it might be something wierd like Arabic or French. I kept my prize pupil (he has common sense and also likes to talk) with me during the testing. He was a great help to me. When my testee couldn't seem to understand my Krio, then he, Ismalia Bangura, would explain for me. After awhile, Ismalia got to know my questions pretty good, so some of them I would leave to him completely. I would just sit back and rest and write down their answer. Even so, I was doing most of the talking, and all of it in Krio. I guess it was all good practice to get me warmed up for when lectures start tomorrow. Compared to the testing, the lectures shouldn't be bad because they are only 40 minutes long, which isn't much after you've done 6 hours.

I didn't think too much of this testing before the school had started. I thought it would be just a waste of time. But once I started, I sure changed my opinion of it, and found out something that I hadn't really realized before. It didn't take me very long to findout that these students didn't know very much. I was surprised, and shocked even, at them because these people were all carpenters and masons and even culvert supervisors who have all been working at these occupations for CARE for at least all of this last work season, and most of them have been working for several years. Even so, alot of my questions, which I thought were basic to the type of work they were employed in, completely stumped them or they gave answers which were totally wrong. This changed the previous opinion that I had - that I, someone who has only been on the job for a few months, wouldn't be able to teach much to the workers, who have been on the job for years and years. Now I see that I have more than enough things to try to teach them.

Thursday, August 12, 1976, 5:00 pm - Day 198

To my very great surprise, and a good helping of shock, as I was squeezing something popped up from it, and I was as startled by it as a little kid is by the toy, Jack-In-The-Box. It was about a quarter inch long and about a sixteenth inch in diameter, and was puss colored. I took it in my fingers and gave it a closer look. It looked like a small worm but wasn't moving. It turns out that it was a tumba fly larva and, luckily for me, they are singular buggers, and finding one doesn't mean that there are probably others.

The tumba fly cycle is something that every volunteer is aware of. The adult fly likes to lay eggs on wet clothing. This often occurs when the clothes are washed and then put out to dry. The thing to do about it is to make sure that all clothes are completely hot-ironed. This kills off the eggs. Sometimes, though, some might slip through and remain alive in your clothes. They are too small to notice. When you then wear them, an egg might hatch and the baby larva climbs in just beneath your skin, but you can't feel it. In a few days a pimple starts to form, and so now you get your first knowledge of the intrusion. If you realize that you now have a tumba fly larva under your skin, you can put some vasoline over it. This blocks off its air supply and forces it to the surface, where it can be easily taken off with tweezers. If I had realized that it was a tumba fly that I had, I could have then saved myself a lot of pain and worry.

The larva matures under your skin, and then after a few days, it will come out of its own accord, where it then changes into an adult tumba fly. It could be worse. The tumba fly only borrows a bit of your skin for a few days and then goes off and leaves you alone. Just think, what if it multiplied in your body, or what if it planned to stay permanently. As it is, the tumba fly only stays for a week or so, when it gives you a little discomfort and pain, but then leaves without leaving any bad effects behind, except a small hole in your skin with which to remember him by.