Africa Service Project: I've Been Set Up

*This blog post is very geared toward ASP people. So, people who are not familiar with the wonder of ASP, I apologize. However, if you don’t know what it is, you should visit the website (asphome.org), and VOLUNTEER!

It’s January, and you know what that means… it’s SAW season! For the last six years, in January and February, I have been either excitedly awaiting or anxiously and exhaustedly facilitating a Staff Applicant Weekend for those brave souls who want to be ASP staffers.

One of the tasks of these hopeful-future-staffers is to plan a day of runs, given certain restrictions – construction materials have to be there at a certain time, everything can’t be carried at once, meetings are scheduled, etc. Although never actually confirmed (why didn’t we ever do this?), it is highly theorized that the scenario that we give these eager youths is actually impossible to complete while meeting all of the requirements of safely loading vehicles, being on time, and having materials to people when they need them.

The ASP scenario seems daunting and unimaginable… but you ain’t seen nothing yet. Check it.

SCENARIO:
It’s Beautification Day at the Basse House! You decide that the shelves need to be shored up in the kitchen or else they will topple to the floor within a few days! You decide it can be done with a few 2x2’s and some nails. How will you complete the task?

Seems easy right? But wait!!! Everyone who’s been to a SAW or who’s been on ASP staff knows that there’s always something unseen and unpleasant that springs up, and our scenarios are no different. So…

SURPRISE SITUATION!
Oh, guess what. You’re in Africa. You have no car. You’re in a town that barely qualifies as such. You have no materials, and don’t know where to go to get them. You don’t know what’s available or how much to pay for it. The shelves you have to shore up are nailed to a concrete wall, which the nails do not stay in. Deal with that, sucker.

Here’s how this sucker dealt with this situation.

Since the shelves could not be nailed into the wall effectively, we decided to build a support in the front of the shelves, and then put a similar support on the first shelf to support the second, immediately above.

Without a tape measure or measuring equipment of any kind, we took craft cord and measured from the shelf to the floor. Was the shelf level? No. Was the floor level? Most decidedly no. Was the craft cord hanging plumb? Please. Was the craft cord pulled to the extent of its tautness? Doubtful. Was anything about this accurate in any way? Take a guess.

So, then, I take our six lengths of purple craft cord, and start riding towards Basse. I ride until I see a man with motorcycle equipment and bike tires our front, and say, maybe this man will know where they sell wood… As you are undoubtedly questioning my logic at this point, let me tell you, thinking back on it now, I feel the same quizzical look crossing my face.

But, eventually this man found me a carpenter. This man didn’t actually sell any wood, nor speak English, but he was a carpenter. I was getting somewhere.

Eventually, this carpenter brought me to a man that does sell wood. I know what most of you are thinking. Even bad Appalachian hardware stores have wood in uniform sizes, that’s been planed and maybe treated in some way to make it look the same. And they have some sort of selection in terms of length.

This man had ten pieces of wood. That’s it. If I didn’t want one of them, I had to find somewhere else to go. These ten splintery pieces of wood, which he called “1x6” varied in width from three to seven inches. They were all about fourteen feet long. He wanted 190 dalasis for the piece of wood that I thought could make this shelf stand. Then, I talked to the carpenter who had come along. I asked him how much it would be for him to rip it in half, and then cut it into six pieces. So altogether, seven cuts, although one would be very long.

He said 3000 dalasis.

I cannot put enough punctuation in that sentence to adequately convey how aghast I was at that price. That’s the equivalent of about $120.

I laughed in his face, shook my finger at him, and told him he was a bad man in two languages he didn’t understand, and then he said, “Ok. 300 dalasis.”

I wanted to properly punish him for his trying to rip me off so extravagantly, so I left, thinking I could find wood elsewhere.

I went to two different shops that had plywood out front, but neither had planks of wood. I tried to explain to one shop owner what I wanted by pointing at the planks of wood covering the two-foot-deep gutter full of garbage that act as a bridge for potential patrons. He immediately tried to sell me those pieces of wood.

Feeling downtrodden and slightly ashamed, I returned to the original shop, and said agreed on the price, which I still think was too high.

The carpenter took the piece of wood, and set to work. Interesting note – carpenters here don’t have chalk lines. They take a bunch of scraps of fabric, and tie them together to make a long rope. Then they dip it in oil. Then they wrap it around a stick. When it’s time to make a long cut, they unroll it, stretch it and snap it, and boom! Straight line. Less environmentally friendly, less temporary, and more flammable than its American counterpart, but it worked.

Now, I still wish I didn’t have to pay him 300 dalasis, but the way that that man ripped a 14 foot board in half using a hacksaw was pure magic. With this man’s skills with non power tools, I think he could do construction good, fast, AND cheap.

I pulled out my daintily pieces of purple craft cord, stretched them what I thought was the appropriate amount, and allowed him to cut the pieces.

Finally, I had six pieces of correctly cut wood, and two longer pieces. And one bike. And a two kilometer walk back to the construction site.

I strapped the small ones on the back, still making me about 4 feet wide. I balanced the longer two precariously on the seat and handlebars, and struggled through the sandy roads back to the Basse House.

Now, all we had to do was slide the boards into place, hammer in a few nails, and our shelves were good to go!

However, something about the craft cord plan didn’t go exactly right. All the boards were about an inch or an inch and a half too long. That meant, we had to use the tools that we had, which included.

- 1 hammer
- 1 hacksaw that was the equivalent of a butter knife.
- A handful of nails
- A surprisingly nice level

The first tool to be deemed completely unnecessary was the level. I think the level was a cruel joke that someone wanted to play on anyone trying to do construction in the Gambia. If you think Appalachia is not level… I promptly banished that level to a shed, never to be used again for anything related to construction.

Next, I tore into those boards with that hacksaw, but I’m no Gambian carpenter. My cuts were wiggly and of poor quality, and took a long time and most of my energy. Eventually, we ended up with some shelves that bend slightly less when you put dishes on them than they did yesterday.

Although the construction related differences between the Gambia and America are staggering, there is one construction tactic that works in both settings.

Shimming is global.