Sunday, September 11, 2011

"Road Crew" By Alex

Today I was wondering what I would be doing at school, and I am always amazed at what comes up and how busy I can be. Antonio, one of the vigilantes (guards) came up to me and said, "Let's go help over there," in Spanish, of course. He and Chepe, the other vigilante, carrying shovels and pushing a wheel barrel, handed me a length of eight inch PVC pipe and off we went strolling down the dirt road along side of the school. We walked about a quarter mile to a place in the road where I realized that I was going to be working on a road crew put together at the last minute by the office staff at school. Before I proceed I will give a bit of history. The majority of the road to school is dirt and very dusty and the last bit before you get to the school is up a pretty steep hill. Every year it gets very rutty during the rainy season and now it is going to be paved with cobblestone or interlocking pavers. When we arrived in August, the road crews had started the grading process and sections of the road had been blocked off. As a result, a new temporary road was cut along the outer edge of the town to accommodate traffic to the school and beyond.

This new road is all freshly cut dirt along the hillsides with not a lot of forethought going into it. Winding, descending and rising along the way it can get very muddy and slippery after a good rain with the buses and other traffic having a slippery time ascending the hills and crossing the swales. A few times buses have become stuck in the mud, and as a result, students have been late for school. There has been an attempt at  alleviating the problem by the "strategic" placement of crushed rock in specific areas which usually falls short of what is really necessary.

Place in point. As we arrived at the work spot, we followed the road downhill where, at the bottom, is a creek flowing across the road while the ascending road on the other side of the creek is much steeper with an added curve to the right. Our motley crew made up of bus drivers, school guards and four young Honduran recruits began picking and shoveling a trench across the road in the middle of the creek. This was no easy chore with the ground being made up of every size of rock you can imagine. My first thought was are we really going to use an eight inch pipe? One of the bus drivers took the roll of hefe (boss) and then another bus driver came and joined him in the roll. They worked as well so that was a plus. Then another guy showed up and started waving his arms and from what I gathered he was saying, "We need a bigger pipe! That pipe is too small! I will make a phone call!"

We resumed our laboring when a bit later another guy, the gringo who owns the bird park here, showed up and talked to the guy making the phone call. Finally, the gringo said, "We need a bigger pipe. This will be disastrous with a big rain. I will go get the pipe." We had to stop digging the trench so traffic had a place to cross so we began shoveling crushed rock into wheel barrels from along the edge of the roadway and wheeling the rock down to beside the trench, dumping it into piles so we could shovel it into place later. Why shovel rock once when you can shovel it twice? A little while later, the guy from the school who sent us there to start the project showed up and put his two cents in about the pipe and sped off - another jefe!

Finally the pipe arrived, a nice eighteen inch diameter corrugated culvert pipe. It was a good thing those guys showed up and demanded a better pipe. We finished digging the trench and placed the pipe. I assumed we were going to backfill around the pipe with the crushed rock we hauled over as this is the correct way by our standards in the US, but to my surprise the others started digging the dirt-clay away from the side of the hill and began dumping it around and on top of the culvert pipe. I wanted to say something, but decided it was not my place or country nor did they need one more jefe. Instead, I willingly helped spreading the dirt around around the culvert. After it was decided that we had an adequate amount of dirt, we commenced spreading the crushed gravel on top of the dirt which was a pain in the ass as it was in piles that we could hardly dig the shovel into. I was thinking about how it would have been much easier to haul it over and dump it on top of the culvert instead of putting it in piles which we would have to move again.

As we finished spreading the material, traffic would drive over it to test it out, but each time a vehicle drove over, the section of road would flex like a sponge from all the dirt below the crushed rock. We will see how it holds up with the next big rain. Even though it was not the most efficient job in some ways, it was a good effort and a new experience of how things get done in Honduras. To top it off I got to work on a Honduran road crew, if that is what you could call us.

Two days later: We had a big rain last night and I was wondering how the culvert was holding up, so the next day I walked over to inspect the culvert. When I arrived, the culvert was intact but, where was all the gravel we spread over the top, not to mention the dump truck load that was brought later that day? Ahh, it all had sunk into the dirt when it turned to mud. Well all in all for now it is okay. We will see how long it will last. Hopefully a long, long time.

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