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Wednesday, August 18, 1976, 7:00 pm - Day 204
I think I will spend this time to tell you a little about the new volunteers. Back on Sunday evening, August 8, a whole bunch of new Peace Corps trainees got off the plane in Freetown. Of the fifty-odd people, 7 of them were ear-marked for the CARE feeder roads project. Two of these 7 are mechanics, and the rest are civil engineers. I will first tell you about the oldest one, Ryan. Ryan (that's his last name, and the only one he likes to be called) is about 64 years old. He can't be much taller than 5 feet, probably 5'4" at the most. I think his wife is long since dead, and he probably has some grown up children living back in the United States. Since 1961, he has been working and living on and off in New Guinea, something to do with the World Mission Organization of his church. He is a very hard man to keep quiet. He is always asking questions or telling stories. Ryan is a mechanic, and will probably be stationed here at the workshop here in Bo.
The rest of the volunteers all look to be about the same age, maybe 22 to 24. They have probably all just recently graduated from college. The next volunteer is the other mechanic, Mike. He is tallish (6'3") but very thin. He says that he has worked on many motorcycles back home, but here in Sierra Leone was the first time that he had ridden one. I was watching at their second practice and Mike seemed to be very confident and sure of himself on the Honda. I think he now holds the record for dumping the bike the most times on one day (he dumped it twice while I was there).
The next volunteer is the first Joe. He is sort of hefty and the first time I met him he was almost overwhelming in his talk. He was almost shouting his sentences and would come across as almost daring you to contradict him, but you would be afraid to, thinking that you had a wild man on your hands. I think he was drunk at the time, and seems to have mellowed out for all of the times that I have seen him since then. He said that he runs a few miles each day, but I don't think he's had time for it lately. I think he is the volunteer that has had experience putting in concrete culvert pipes before, and so we will probably use him as a culvert engineer here.
The second Joe, I can't say much about, because he seems normal and nothing too weird about him. One thing I've noticed though, is that he has a real fine pair of water-proof boots that come two thirds of the way up to his knee.
The next volunteer, Robin, is also pretty normal, so I can't say much about him either. He was the first one of the 7 that I got a chance to talk to, and he seems friendly enough.
Mario is a naturalized American coming originally from Italy and moving to the United States probably as a small child. Italian was his first language, but his only accent seems to be a New England English one. He has alot of stories and jokes which are typically "middle class boy from the big city" quality.
The last of the 7 volunteers was Ernie. I think I heard more about Ernie before he came than after he got here. He went to the same university as Greg, and his roommate was a good friend of Skep's (Skep and Greg both came in when I did). He played football in college and looks like a football player, being a bit on the big side. I think Ernie is the one who has been to Vietnam with the Army Corps of Engineers, and so he already knows a bit about operating big machinery.
All 7 of them were out working at putting in a culvert for the past few days, and I was out helping them. They all seemed willing and anxious to work, but there weren't enough shovels to go around, so quite often I was stuck having to just watch the others work, even when I wasn't tired, because everyone else was very eager to work. I hope they are the same way when they finally get out on the job.
Sunday, August 22, 1976, 9:00 pm - Day 208
I played basketball today for my third time in country, and my second time in about a week. One of the new volunteers brought a basketball, and with us old volunteers and all of the new volunteers, we have enough people to get a good game going. Alot of them are pretty good at it also. I was never really into basketball before as a player. The only time that I remember having played it in high school was when I had the shin splints and so couldn't play. That means that you might have to go all the way back to junior high to find a time when I had basketball in PE. Therefore, it wasn't until about a month ago that I played basketball in my adult life. It was easy to tell, because I was pretty bad compared to all these other people who have grown up playing basketball. Today, I don't think I did too bad. I had some hussle which had been lacking the first times I played. My man wasn't able to lose me as much today as before. I even tried dribbling and took a few shots. I'm nothing great yet. I'm just trying to move my basketball playing ability from bad up to adequate. If I can do that, I'll be satisfied. Taking practice shots before the games has helped me alot also. I think that I am getting an eye for shooting and so am able to make a basket every so often, whereas before I wasn't able to make any, even for close under the basket.
Our training school is now half over. I have only 4 lectures left, 2 this Monday and 2 on Tuesday. Our midterm testing day is this Wednesday and I will use that time to give my final tests, seeing that I don't have any classes after that time. I'll be giving the exact same questions as before, to see if they have been able to absorb anything. I've given 9 lectures so far. 5 of them were on concrete and about 1.5 of those I spent trying to explain what a cubic yard was. Three lectures were on Invert Level and I think I spent about two of those on the different ways to describe slope, with emphasis on percent slope. My last lecture that I have given so far was on skew pipes. In that I also tried to explain a little bit about stream meandering. My remaining lectures are two more on skew pipes, in which I will cover factors to consider when designing a headwall for a culvert. I'm going into designing headwalls because I covered everything that I could on skewed pipes in just about half of a lecture. My last two lectures are on ditch digging. My basic objectives for this will be slope construction and determination and also ditch digging organization. Last season the communal labor only averaged about 0.5 to 1.0 cubic yards of dirt a day, but they should be capable of doing 2 to 3 cubic yards a day.
Saturday, August 28, 1976, 10:00 am - Day 214
Well, all of my lectures were over last Tuesday. Wednesday was a testing day, and I spent 7 hours giving my final. It consisted of 8 questions that I asked on the evaluative test and it took about 15 minutes for each of my 28 students. For figuring grades I looked at how much they knew of these 8 questions and also at how much they improved from the first test. My students were spread over the whole range of grades. The ones at the top learned alot in my classes, so they improved alot on the test and also knew almost all of the answers. There were a few at the bottom also. They came into the school not knowing much and finished the school without having learned anything. I gave out 5 A's, 11 B's, 10 C's, 1 D, and 1 F. Thursday I spent writing up all of my lecture notes and test results and putting them all together into one report. All of the engineers will be doing this, and then all of these reports will be put together into one big report on the training school. It should come in handy for future reference and so that all of the work that was spent in putting together this school could be used next time. School still has another week to go.
Saturday, August 28, 1976, 5:00 pm - Day 214
There is a grader and a D4 bulldozer at the school. These are so the machine operators can practice their skills or try to learn to operate another machine. Last Tuesday I had my first time on a D4. I did a little bush clearing and also some earth pushing. Altogether, I spent about 2 hours on it that day. D4 is a trade name for Catapillar tractor, and CARE also has a few D6's and D7's. These are bigger than the D4. Catapillar also makes D8's and D9's. Compared to all of these others, the D4 is a small machine, but it is big enough when you are just learning. On Thursday I had my first long lesson on a grader. I must have been on it for about 3 or 4 hours, during which time I made myself a practice road about 100 yards long, complete with ditches down each side and cambered on the top.
Today I went out to the school to do some more work with the D4. There were alot(4) of trees that they knocked down yesterday, so the first thing that I did was to proceed to push them over to this spot out of the way. They moved pretty easily, easier than I expected. After that I proceded to knock down another tree that needed to come out. It was a 75 ft palm tree. To knock down a tree with a bulldozer, the thing to do is to first dig it out on one side. After that, a ramp of dirt is built up on the other side and then the bulldozer gets on the side and pushes with its blade held high. This is supposed to allow the tree to fall away from the bulldozer. Well, I cut down on one side and then went around to the other side and made a ramp, and then pushed. The tree wouldn't budge. I went back and cut some more on the other side, and ven some on the sides between the hole and the ramp. I then went back to the ramp and pushed again; still nothing. This wasn't doing my nerves any good. During this whole time I kept glancing up to see what the tree was doing, always worried that it might start to fall at any moment, and to fall towards me! I went back once more and cut deeper on the other side and more on the edges. Again I went back to the ramp and gave it another push. Nothing! I gave it a few more pushes just to make sure.
In the middle of my last push, I was really surprised. The tree didn't fall down, but what happened was that the D4's blade suddenly pushed down, which had the effect of raising the rest of the tractor almost straight up. No sooner had it raised up than it suddenly dropped back down. I shut off the motor and saw that one of the hoses to the hydraulicly powered blade had busted. That would explain why the D4 had suddenly dropped back down, but it is still a mystery to me why it rose up like that in the first place. To raise up, the blade was pushing down, and for the blade to push down, all of the hydraulic fluid would have had to push into the arms of the blade. I don't know of any reason why they would do that. Therefore, at the moment the D4 is sitting broken down, parked under a palm tree that is ready to fall down, and will stay there until at least Monday, because the workshop is closed for the weekend.
The reason that we are taking down all of these trees and doing all of this bush clearing, earth moving, and grading, is because of the agreement we have with the school that we are holding our training school at. For the privilege of using their facilities for 4 weeks, and so that some inexperienced operators can have some place to practice to get some experience, we have agreed to level off this area so that the school will have a place to put a track. The school is getting the better of the deal because CARE is only getting the use of the building, and other than that the only thing that the school is supplying is the chalk for the blackboards. Leveling this field will take more time than there is left in the school, so that CARE would have to keep supplying the machines, even after the school is finished, in order to finish our side of the bargain.
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