How to spot a water leak and other construction stories!
on Carole Green (Sierra Leone), 04/Apr/2011 13:32, 34 days ago
Its the dry season and March is the hottest month of the year. Meanwhile Freetown is being torn apart and being put back together again by the Seventh Chinese Railway Construction Company who are widening and improving all the major roads particularly where I live in the West end of Freetown. I’ve mentioned the clearing technique before which involved bulldozing everything in their way, fences, pylons, drains, fronts of buildings, even religious buildings have suffered and lost their front steps for example (I am wondering if the local worshippers had to pole vault into the building?).It is bizarre to see this just after it happens, like the front of a house I saw, with what remains of a bathroom, the sink and loo hanging onto the wall but the bath gone!! Just after my Birthday party last year at Senegalese, the front of the restaurant was bulldozed off but they just rebuilt it and it now only has 4 tables!It’s amazing how the Saloneans cope with all this, they just get on with and rebuild again and very quickly. Near Leicester Road, the new road went right through a market and the stalls just kept moving around the piles of mud and rubble!!! However, this road building has been going on awhile and shiny new surfaces are starting to appear. There have been drastic consequences however to this massive improvement programme and these are NOT in order of importance:(1) Severe water supplies and long periods without electricity in the areas nearer to the roads(2) Lots of water leaks with the precious stuff seaping out everywhere, mixing with all the dust(3) Enormous and frustrating traffic jams(4) Injury and death of the construction workers, although I have never seen any statistics on this(5) Drainage and sewage problemsYou see Guma Valley Water Company trucks around town and presumably they are going out to search and fix leaks. Guma is the reservoir that supplies much of the city’s water. It can’t be hard to find a leak as its always surrounded with crowds of kids of all ages with everything from a small bucket to large 5 gallon yellow plastic containers (called rubbers???) chatting and waiting to fill up. Rarely is there trouble. Kids can charge 1000le for delivering arubber to a ‘water customer’ which they carry on their heads. Even the smallest child can manage a bucket on their heads. There are bigger water barrels called 'Pigs feet' containers as they are used to import the tasty product! I think they take 25 gallons. I'm glad to see them with just waterand not the original contents! There are public taps around the town too, as the number of houses having piped water is quite small (around 20% I think) and collecting water is a water of life and its gets harder and harder towards the end of the dry season.I must get some photos of the colourful and time consuming process of water collection and of all the frenetic building activity as we hurtle towards the 50th Anniversary of Sierra Leone’s Independence on 27th April. The deadline is to have some of the roads completed by then. Already there are bunting and flags appearing everywhere and buildings newly painted. There's still time for more paiting before the big celebrations, but that’s for the next blog!!!