Gotta give them a hand

I waddled down to Bole 19 this morning to see the end of the Castel tournament play. When I got there there, one of the women's doubles was close to being finished. All four ladies had a lovely serve, leaving the ground just before making contact. It ended 7-6, 5-2 and was entertaining. From what Melaku had told me, I thought tournament play would be going on all day. Hiruy told me there was a mixed doubles game at some time today but that was it for now. The tournament championship games are tomorrow, starting bright and early and apparently finishing by noon'ish.

Addis is a buzz with a plethora of construction sites. Everywhere you go there are massive mounds of dirt, rocks, piles of sand and concrete ready to be mixed. The rock piles at some of these locations are made up of boulders the size of soccer balls. Often one sees a worker swinging a pick axe, breaking the rock into smaller, more manageable pieces. All the concrete, except for that destined to be walls or floors of a new building, is mixed by hand. They were smoothing concrete out for a new parking area at the one storey sort of strip mall beside Deker. Speaking of floors for new buildings ... they are usually made of cinder blocks then they slap concrete on the top and bottom sort of like parging that goes on for basements in the west. I believe they do not pour concrete for two reasons. First, they do not have enough since access is strictly controlled by he government (like everything else!). Secondly, they have no way of getting the concrete up to the 10th (for example) storey of a building. Since they do everything by hand, any holdup on hand transport up 100 feet (if possible) may render the material useless by the time it reaches its destination; not to mention the possibility of a 10 cubic foot containing a solid 3,000 kilogram piece of set concrete :).

Some of the sites are sights to behold. Behind Deker they are dismantling a house using, guess what ... hammers and chisels. The roof came off a few days ago and now they are hacking away at the walls, making slow progress. That brings me to the gist of this post ... the fact that they do close to everything by hand. This wonder has been the subject of previous posts, however the sheer number of sites driven by good old elbow grease is multiplying as I write. Labour is so cheap and fossil fuel, not to mention the cost of equipment, is very very high. Close to work they are laying some sort of pipe in the ground, digging a trench with a machine brilliantly named the "Ditch Witch" (wish I'd thought of that name).

Moving sand from point A to point B .. by hand
Splitting soccer-ball sized boulders - by hand (with no eye protection to boot)
Mixing concrete - by hand using pointed shovels
Hoisting material up X storeys of a new house - by hand

... and the list is endless. I spoke to Hiruy and the tennis starts at 9AM Sunday, and ferenge will be there in clubs.