Fixin’ things

This week I thought I would run through an account of some of the efforts to fix various things that I have encountered or some things that may need to be fixed.

Let’s start with the rake from our site.  Last year we bought the only form of rake you can find here in Singida region for helping to clean up the grass clippings and branches cut.  Now understand they have what is called an outdoor broom which looks much like the stereotype of what a witches flying broom would look like.  Basically a rough straw set of bristles attached to a piece of wood.  The other version has no piece of wood and they bend at the waist to use it or have little kids do it.  They are constantly sweeping the dirt around buildings-when the kids do it is more like a mini dust storm.

The rake is more like non flexible rakes used raking through dirt before planting it.  Well after about one year two of our “tines” broke off from the rake.  The tines are made of rebar pieces that are then sharpened.  So I took the rake with me into town to have it “welded” back together.  Though I suspected using some superglue might be better for it.

 

post repair but gives you an idea of what I am describing rake wise

There are several welders along the street to my hotel that I walk past every day I am in town and my plan was just to take it to one of them and see what they could do.  The first afternoon I was in town though, the hotel was having some work done.  Luck would have it that they were welding some protective frames for their water pumps. 

Let me describe the welding operation first.  As I walk in and turn the corner on the outside of the first building, I see a metal ladder.  Not aluminum just structural tube welded together to form a ladder.  It is positioned next to the main connection and breaker for the electrical coming into the hotel.  That box is open and there are two light guage wires connected directly to the electrical breaker.  Those wires then run down the wall and along the cement paving stones to the courtyard.  The wires are two short to reach all the way so at two different locations they have made bare wire twist connections.  No wire nuts, no splice connectors not even electrical tape.

Yes the exterior electrical panel is a wood enclosure!

bare wire splices

From there they go to the standard transformer style welding machine that has no controls for controlling the wattage or heat in welding.  This device is in a metal cart with wood bottom and has a bare wire connection as well.

So I got get my rake and bring it out to the guy doing the welding.  He looks at for a second then lays it down on the ground.  He does not have any working clamps or things of that nature.  In fact the ground wire for the welder does not have a clamp to attach to the item being welded just a metal pad attached to the wire.  At least this time the wires are heavier gauge. 

So he puts the tine on the ground and holds the rake in his hand.  He uses his flip flop to hold the tine in place and lays the ground pad on the rake head.  He forgets to lower his sunglasses for eye protection.  For those not familiar with welding it not only protects from sparks but the arc created is extremely bright.  It is like looking directly at the sun for a very long time.  Normally you use special helmets with numbered glass lens filters that protect you from the damage the arc can cause to your eyes.  Speaking as one who has had welder’s burn to my eyes it is not fun at all.  He also had no gloves and just a standard T-shirt, he did at least have pants on.

Then he strikes his arc and gets a tack weld on the rack and tine then does the second tine. He finishes the weld on both tines all without ever lowering his sunglasses to his eyes.  The cost was 2000 TSH or about $1.05.  So far it is holding so maybe better than superglue.  Though it does bend because as always they never changed from a tack rod to a structural rod since they don’t actually sell those locally.

Did I mention that this is when the ladies at the hotel decided to wash courtyard?  Fortunately I was able to convince them this was a bad idea with the bare wires laying on the ground.  I think I made friends because they decided if they could not wash the courtyard they would just watch TV.

Other fixin’ things I have seen going on lately are the cleaning of the storm water collection system around town.  They basically remove sections of the concrete covers with holes in them and someone hopes down and shovels out all the trash in the system.  Here is a picture of one of the boxes in the street with everything they cleaned out.  They do this twice a year.

They may have to do it sooner this year.  Remember a while back I mentioned that they were installing plastic conduits for what was labeled fiber optics?  Well they dug the trenches for these right next to the storm water trenches.  So after they cleaned all the storm water trenches the group installing the cable came back and covered up their trenches and placed the stone covers back down.  Only they are now about a 6” lower than they used to be despite no compaction being performed as they put the dirt back. 

So I watched as they “finished up” and noticed they were pushing all their extra dirt left on top and all the trash debris from their work into the storm water trenches that had just been cleaned.  Guess that is somebody else’s problem.

Speaking of fixin' things we have had to bring in the site's piki piki to be repaired in the back of the Landcruiser which is also having battery problems.  So this morning I am talking with Isayah who takes care of the grounds trying to explain I need some folks to help me push start the truck so I can take it town to get a new battery and get the piki piki fixed.  "sukuma mwanzo" which is the literal translation for the two words "push start"  He replies "kutupa mbale" which is not in the book but "kutupa mbali" means to throw away or abandon.  Think we still need some fixin' on this language thing.  However about an hour later 4 guys weighing about 120 lbs each showed up to help push start the truck.  I really wished one of them could have operated the clutch so I could help push.  They needed at least one guy who weight over 150 to get some leverage.  Eventually another 5 guys showed up and we got it started.