Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 13, 2007

Finally on the 8th we poured the concrete to make the ground slow slab of the house that we are building. It was almost a farce and things very nearly descended to a circus act, but as they say all is well that ends well.

We are supposed to start of early in the morning because of the evening showers. But the planned seven a clock start was not to be, late in the night of the 7th it was decided to put off the start to 8:00am, eventually the first bucket was poured at about 9:30 and the supervisor promptly got an earfull from me.

There is a huge Jack-Fruit tree close to the site, and fallen leaves littered the form work. Many had gathered around the beam bottoms. After hanging around kicking their heels, smoking and drinking tea for nearly an hour, the louts just poured the first batch without bothering to clear up the debris. After my yelling they stopped work for a moment and did clear up most of the stuff.

The moment the pouring resumed, there was a power cut and work had to be stopped for about 10 minutes. That is because the winch and the mixer were both electric and not diesel powered. After the electricity supply was restored work got under way good and proper but it was time for another earful for the louts. They had added way too much water to the mix.

The louts who do the mixing, put in the same amount of cement, water, mettle and sand regardless of the weather. Overnight rains meant the mettle and the sand were thoroughly soaked. That means a mere 10 liters of waters instead of the more usuall 20-25 would have been sufficient. But these louts work by rote and it took a bit of telling before they got the mix right.

A little afterwards we had the third stoppage; you guessed it; this time we had run out of water. A browser was promptly ordered but the water supply was restored in about half and hour's time. Fortunately even after a couple of hours, the water bowser had not yet arrived so we told them to fly a kite.

You might have thought that was the end of the story but it started raining soon after! Another work stoppage and a scramble to cover the areas that had already been poured. The rains eased after about half an hour, and we managed to finish it off. But not before one of the louts poured concrete over my shoe. Posted by raditha at May 13, 2007 3:27 AM