16 Oct 2019
I spent my first waking hour-and-a-half writing this blog and loading photos before going to the lobby for coffee at 6:45. It was another cool, hazy morning but we could see a little more blue in the sky today--or maybe that was just our imagination and best wishes.
Today’s breakfast was a little different with grilled eggs on lightly toasted bread for sandwiches and local, small and tart bananas. I had two of each and particularly liked the bananas. Everyone else seemed to like the change.
Dinesh couldn’t join us in the morning as he was already on his way to Unako House for meetings. Instead a tall young man named “Man” joined us. Everyone was ready to go at 8:10 and Santos was there early with the bus. Man asked if anyone wanted to ride on his motorcycle with him to the site, but I quickly declined for everyone--especially Grace. We had a good chuckle over that. Man took off on his bike and we were a few minutes behind.
About a mile into the trip, we realized that Man was just dropping his bike off at home (or somewhere) as the bus picked him up on the way. We stopped in Gadhawa at the concrete shop where they made blocks, bricks, as well as the concrete rings and caps used for septic pits. Sam met us there and he along with Santos were trying to arrange for truck and wagon transportation for the 24 rings and four caps that we would need today. We looked around the site and found the rings and were fascinated by the machinery and processes used to make the pieces. There were also long rectangular steel molds for the kind of steel reinforced pillars that are standard for local home and building construction. There were several rings and caps recently formed that were drying and curing on the ground and the rings were stacked in several places about four high. Checking the dimensions, each ring seemed to be about two- to three-inches thick, 14”-15” in height and with a diameter very close to three feet. Mark later did a calculation on the weight of each based upon the density of concrete and came up with a very believable 260 pounds.
The wait for a truck took much longer than usual as it turned out the first candidate hand truck wasn’t operable. We waited almost an hour for the first to arrive, then loaded six rings and two caps aboard the small steel trailer. The hand truck, used for everything from plowing to towing and taxi service in the area was very slow when laden with the trailer and rings. It was also slowed by our driver’s propensity for stopping in each direction to pick up and deliver other cargo for additional pay, we later learned.
We arrived at the work sites shortly after 10am and found that at the near site the local workers had determined that one pit needed to be three feet deeper and the other one only needed another foot of digging. Mark jumped in along with Kevin and they started to work. Meanwhile, out hand truck and rings showed up and we walked behind it to the second site. There, we needed to prep the path to the latrine pits as it was a narrow fit to our work site for the truck and trailer.
The truck and trailer backed in very delicately to the closest approach point to our latrine, just a footstep away from the pig sty. Meanwhile, we had to disassemble most of the wooden gate to the homes backyard area where the latrines were located so that we could bring the rings back. The 30 meter move of these 260 pound rings was not trivial and by the time we had them stacked near the pits along with two caps, we were all drenched in sweat.
The first thing we did, though, noticing the speed of the truck was to unload all six at the back of the wagon so that he could head back. In addition to unloading the rings, one of the local guys also went into our pits and dug out a little more along the sides to even up the pits. Even more water had seeped in during the night and the water level was just at seven feet below the ground surface.
Santos had the bus waiting for us and we jumped aboard to go back to the concrete foundry for another load. When we arrived a truck was blocking the way getting a load of bricks, so we had to wait almost a half-hour for the driveway to clear. During that time we bought drinks at a local restaurant--bottled Coke and Sprite along with some cold water--and sat in the back to relax.
We finally had a chance to load the rings and did so quickly, returning to Unako house to find the pits complete at the nearby site as we also unloaded this shipment of rings there. By the time this was done and we’d sent the truck back for more, it was lunch-time.
During lunch we discussed our mounting frustration with not knowing who was in charge or what the plan for each latrine was. We had not received any kind of plan, the plans seemed (to us at least) to be changing hourly, and there was not a good sense of why we were doing what we were doing. I also did not have a good sense that whoever was in charge of the building knew anything about soil hydraulics and water tables.
After lunch--which was excellent, by the way, featuring a rice and coconut porridge--I asked Dinesh about our concerns. He still could not tell me who was in charge, but did say what we would be doing next which was to put rocks in the bottom of each pit to make sure the rings had a level base on which to sit. In each pit, the water was bailed again until they could see the bottom in order to ascertain if the base was level as rocks were thrown in, but that was very difficult to maintain as the water just seeped in quickly, covering the rocks and any sand that was added.
We asked about the steel rods that would act as the corner braces for the structures and never really got a good explanation for why those couldn’t be now installed into the set foundation corners with rocks and concrete. We wouldn’t do that until Thursday when the welder would come to look over our work, but then he wouldn’t weld the top braces and roof truss to our four vertical shafts until Friday. Oh well. In the meantime, we had people sitting around that could’ve easily and enthusiastically installed the rods.
In the afternoon, we managed to get our final two loads of rings to the sites bringing the daily total to 24. At the far site, with Mike’s, Debra’s, and Grace’s hard work and insistence, one of the rings was actually installed in the base of the first pit--video’ed by Debra for our instruction. Mike reported that the expert at that site, though, wasn’t completely happy with how level the ring was in the bottom of the pit and said that we would need to go down into the pit with two of three people in the morning and shim it level with river rocks. That should be fun.
Meanwhile, back at the near site, the foreman kept insisting on adding more sand and gravel to the bottom of each pit which, given the water that had now seeped back, only raised the level of the water and did not provide any visibly level bottom.
As we left, Dinesh and I chatted for a short time and he apologized for not fully explaining the process to us at the beginning. I told him that, especially with a group of five PhD engineers and yet another engineer in Mark, we could probably be a LITTLE overbearing in our questions and need for explanation, too. We ended the day, though, happy with our progress and ready to put all of the rings into the pits the next day. Dinesh also said that we might begin digging at sites three and four later tomorrow if the rings went in quickly. We could leave behind some of the team to do the concrete and rod installation while we dug pits again. There was some mention of a visit to see and meet some locals that would be at an indeterminate (or to be determined) time, but that was left as a possibility only. We all seemed to hope that that would be quick and that we would have a full day of work now that we’d overcome some of the uncertainty of the previous two days.
On the return to the hotel, we picked up a few locals who asked for rides. Santos had done so a few times earlier moving from Unako House and Gadhawa and back during the day. In each case the riders were thrilled to get a free ride to their destination and not required to pay. It was a special treat, it seemed, to ride with a group of dirty foreign workers, too!
We returned to the hotel shortly after 4:30 and everyone went to their rooms for their own cleaning ritual. Hoot brought laundry to the front desk and we’ll all be curious to see how that goes. I didn more bucket laundry.
Dinner was ramen noodles and chicken in a spicy sauce along with plenty of beer. We hung around until about 8:30pm talking, then everyone went to their rooms for a good night’s sleep.
During the day, I did take a few minutes to photograph the rice harvest, especially the winnowing of the rice using hand-crank fans to blow the husks away from the rice--all of this done by hand. The amount of hand labor--or lack of machine assistance--in the rice industry here is amazing. All of the fields seem to be ut by hand, gathered by hand, arm, and back, and threshed by hand. We’ve seen a few machine systems threshing the rice along the roadsides, but it was all from stalks carried to that site. We’ve also seen a few tractors plowing fields, but water buffalo seem to be as prevalent for that task as well.
The land is amazing fertile, too. In the bottom areas around the river, people are gathering what looks like wild growth lentils. I could find black lentils growing in the corners of fields and it was unclear whether those gathering the lentils had actually planted some small plots of their own on public land or were just more-or-less scavenging. The rice grows amazing thick here and in the ditches and along fences you can see long green beans growing free, squash sprouting from thatch roofs (the fruit growing on the roof), okra, and all types of flowers. Cabbage and cauliflower are being grown in some fields and we did see one field of corn as well. The only bare earth is in the rocky banks of the rivers. Everything else is green or grown and ready for harvest.