Raising the Second Tower

I’m tired.  It’s been a little over a week and I am exhausted.  It doesn’t help that the last few nights have not been the greatest for sleeping.  And the long day today probably contributed to that feeling.  I’ll be going to bed immediately after finishing this.

It rained quite a bit last night.  Not good news for the roads, which were a muddy mess.  So we sloshed and slid our way into Olosheki, taking about an hour to get there.  This is right at the edge of where it’s practical to drive in from town each day.  Any longer and just camping out in tents at the site would probably be more expedient.  It would beat navigating these awful roads twice a day.

The sun was high in the sky by the time we arrived.  Time to raise and assemble the water tower.  It took a little prep work but soon we had the two halves of the tower in position. These were tipped up with ropes and a lot of help.

The two sections were tied together with a few cross-members that we had pre-drilled, and then I set to welding all the remaining cross braces in place. This tower is twice as tall as the tower we just finished at Kimelok as there is a rise in elevation towards one corner and the entire property needs to benefit from gravity-flow.

Duncan had a crew of six guys and they set about digging a trench towards the other side of the property to lay a pipe.  For a ten-acre piece of land, that’s a long trench to dig. Especially by hand.

The remainder of the day was spent assembling pieces on the tower.  I welded all the cross braces, then Dave started on the deck supports at the top, with Willie’s help.  By the time 5pm rolled around, several deck support beams were in place.  There were some very threatening clouds rolling in, and we wanted to get back to the hotel before dark, so we packed up and took off at just after 5pm.

About halfway back to the hotel, we were deluged with rain.  The sides of the roads became rivers and water was running everywhere.  By the time we reached the hotel, the rain had stopped.

We came in and spent some time dividing up the food supplies in the conference rooms into 30 bags to be delivered tomorrow.  Tomorrow will probably be another busy day.

I know this doesn’t sound like much but I can feel the fatigue.  I was really wondering how these missionaries do it, keeping up a busy pace like this, but Joy mentioned at dinner that she was also tired. 

Now I don’t feel so bad.