A tale of two fundis

I guess I should start by telling you what a fundi is.  The original meaning of the word was someone who is a specialist in some type of work.  It was the word for someone who could repair a phone, a welder, a carpenter.  It has since been used more generally.  It can still mean someone like a welder but also someone who builds a building is now a fundi.  A person you hire to dig a hole in the ground is a fundi.

Over the last month I have hired two different type of fundis to help at the school.  One was a typical fundi and one was not.  Let me describe how things went with both and see if you can guess which is the normal type and which is not.

fundi one with his one tool

Fundi One was hired to install the solar systems and wire up all the outlets at the school.  Normally this is a project I would do, but after my illness in September I was not up to go crawling around in the attic space for a week or two which is how long it would take me and my old rickety bones to do all the small attic space work.  The young guys took four days.

Fundi One showed up after a long discussion about his price to make sure it included everything needed to install the 4 solar panels (including the frames) and the entire system (which includes going into the attic to work).  Day one he shows up about an hour and half late.  He only has a set of pliers with him, no other tools.  He has no flashlight or ladder or screwdriver or wirestripper/knife.  He has no wood to make the solar frames.  He has no connectors for the wire (we would use wire nuts but here it is a connector).  He also has no electrical tape.

This  unit is in a classroom.  The charge controller and outlet are up high because when our cabinets for the TV arrive they are tall cabinets and the battery and inverter will move up on top of it to get it out of the children's reach.

Fortunately from my previous projects I had most of the items needed for him to use except wood to make solar frames.  Because he has no tools to make the frame even if we get the wood it is decided to get a carpenter to make them out of TPC sugar plantation area.  He also needed to be paid something at the end of every day.

He was local so we did not have to put him up to sleep at night but his first question was when did we normally feed the contractors.

Now part of this work was also increasing the solar on my house with a new panel and battery so I could run a refrigerator.  I know who do I think I am wanting a refrigerator.  I had planned on paying for the upgrades myself, but B2BU Ministries found a generous group to cover the costs of the solar upgrade and the new refrigerator. (Thank you and elephant)  Even after all the rain we have had and cloudy days most of the time, the refrigerator ran great during the day. In Tanzania it is common to cut them off at night which I did because the power to start up the compressor is about 6 times what it takes to run the compressor and after all the cloudy days I did not want the compressor to struggle to start because that causes them to go bad.

Another thing we added to my house as a test and because my house is the smallest building to do the test on is an attempt to get rid of bats.  In Tanzania, especially the rural areas, the moment you build a roof the bats come to live in your structure.  There are a lot of ideas about how to get rid of them.  I have tried just about everything, but normally a long term maintenance plan of cleaning and spraying to kill them is the only thing that will keep your building in good shape.  Lately we have heard putting up transparent roof panels will allow enough light in the attic space to make the bats leave.  Well if that works then putting lights in the attic space directly tied to a solar panel so when the sun is up the lights are on should work as well.  Too early to tell if the reduced number of bats in my attic is permanent or not and it did not get rid of all of them.  I will try to upgrade the lights in the coming weeks to boost effectiveness.  If this test does work that will be cheaper than retrofitting our buildings with transparent roof panels.  We can add this to older buildings and do the roof panels on new buildings.

Now on to Fundi 2.  He was part of a "bid package" I did with four contractors to get prices on our next school building and to do repairs to our existing latrine septic and soak pit systems.  A contractor from the TPC area who does a good bit of work at the sugar plantation was the low bidder.  After discussing with B2BU Ministries we decided to proceed with the latrine repairs for safety issues this year.  So I texted Fundi 2 Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday he showed up to go over details and get advance payment (very common on projects where a fundi buys materials).  Normally they want 70-80% up front if they can't get all of it.  We agree to 70% of materials for a specific phase of work.  This contractor only asked for 50% but accepted cheerfully when I told him I only had 40% on hand that day.  We agreed to start work on Thursday.  His crew of 7 showed up at 10 am with tools.  They worked through the night.  The only thing they asked for is if we had more flashlights so they could see to work at night.  They did not ask about where to sleep or if we would feed them, instead waited on us to bring it up.  Were grateful when we offered to feed them lunch with the kids.

Friday they had finished digging two large holes-one for the septic tank and one for the soak pit.  We have had a second rainy season this year that has lead to flooded roads again.  Instead of using it as an excuse, the contractor told me what he was doing to work around the problem to keep things going.  He even spent more on concrete locally because he could not get some shipped from town without asking for an increase in his price.

I asked him to add some small spigots for the cleaner to get water when he moves our hand washing spigots to the latrine area and put in sinks.  He says that is too small a change to request an increase.  I may have to tip this guy if he keeps it up.

Figured out which one is the normal contractor in all this.  Yep Fundi one.  Fundi two is the first to show up with tools and the first to decide on his own to work through the night to get something done.  Normally when we build a building the contractor sends out two guys, if he is making his own blocks then 4 guys.

If you would like to hear about a third fundi, then the guy building our desks, cabinets and bookshelves.  He delivered our desks with a varnish coat on them.  Over two months to build the above four bookcases.  It is getting close to three months and the cabinets are still not here.