Roof
Hello all,
It’s been a while since I last posted because I couldn’t’ really think of anything exciting to write about. I went to America and came back. Upon my return I found myself more relaxed than I have been in a long, long time. Then I found out my roof was going to be replaced, and I flipped out and haven’t recovered since. Normally, this is not something that would upset me greatly, but the powers that be decided to tear up a perfectly good corrugated cement roof and replace it with corrugated metal. What’s the difference, you ask? Well, now my building is made out of the same materials as convection ovens and smelters. So it is hot, hot, hot inside- about five degrees more than it would otherwise be. And will the roof not leak, unlike the last one, built five years earlier?
After barring the workers from entering my building, I reluctantly opened the door and showed the foreman my concerns with the structural problems. No problem, he says. We fix things like this all the time. Your roof won’t leak, “n’shallah” (God willing), which is another way of saying who knows. This, of course, was an unacceptable answer, which I brought to my host mom’s attention in the form of aggravated screaming.
“What about the structural problems? I have no confidence at all that they’ll fix it.”
“This is Senegal, this isn’t America. This guy is a professional. I wouldn’t’ hire just anyone to do the job,” was her response.
I briefly accepted this answer until I saw the workers crookedly nailing new sheets to my roof with rocks.
I couldn’t help feeling that the whole exercise is a parable for the woes of development projects. In essence a lot of money was spent to change something that didn’t work properly, only to replace it with something worse. If a five year-old had designed my roof, i.e. made it triangular and downward sloping, this whole mess would have been avoided. Instead, someone had to get fancy, and cheap, and combined with the fact that no measurements were taken before materials were either cut or placed or lengths nailed in, well, you can imagine. And instead of doing a better job the second time around, the fix was just as shoddy as the original job, only more time and effort was wasted correcting the original work.
I shut up and gave in, seeing that the workers had already torn up a good portion of the old roof. And now, the new one is in place. Given the fact that the corners were sealed up essentially with mud and the nails holding the segments to the support beams were stopped with cut up pieces of flip flop, I feel justified in moving out if the damn thing doesn’t hold.
It’s been a while since I last posted because I couldn’t’ really think of anything exciting to write about. I went to America and came back. Upon my return I found myself more relaxed than I have been in a long, long time. Then I found out my roof was going to be replaced, and I flipped out and haven’t recovered since. Normally, this is not something that would upset me greatly, but the powers that be decided to tear up a perfectly good corrugated cement roof and replace it with corrugated metal. What’s the difference, you ask? Well, now my building is made out of the same materials as convection ovens and smelters. So it is hot, hot, hot inside- about five degrees more than it would otherwise be. And will the roof not leak, unlike the last one, built five years earlier?
After barring the workers from entering my building, I reluctantly opened the door and showed the foreman my concerns with the structural problems. No problem, he says. We fix things like this all the time. Your roof won’t leak, “n’shallah” (God willing), which is another way of saying who knows. This, of course, was an unacceptable answer, which I brought to my host mom’s attention in the form of aggravated screaming.
“What about the structural problems? I have no confidence at all that they’ll fix it.”
“This is Senegal, this isn’t America. This guy is a professional. I wouldn’t’ hire just anyone to do the job,” was her response.
I briefly accepted this answer until I saw the workers crookedly nailing new sheets to my roof with rocks.
I couldn’t help feeling that the whole exercise is a parable for the woes of development projects. In essence a lot of money was spent to change something that didn’t work properly, only to replace it with something worse. If a five year-old had designed my roof, i.e. made it triangular and downward sloping, this whole mess would have been avoided. Instead, someone had to get fancy, and cheap, and combined with the fact that no measurements were taken before materials were either cut or placed or lengths nailed in, well, you can imagine. And instead of doing a better job the second time around, the fix was just as shoddy as the original job, only more time and effort was wasted correcting the original work.
I shut up and gave in, seeing that the workers had already torn up a good portion of the old roof. And now, the new one is in place. Given the fact that the corners were sealed up essentially with mud and the nails holding the segments to the support beams were stopped with cut up pieces of flip flop, I feel justified in moving out if the damn thing doesn’t hold.
posted by Unknown at 7:56 AM
1 Comments:
One of the worst things about living in a truly foreign culture is the lack of agency, of autonomy or even influence. In the end one threatens the local powers that be with the most dire consequences and one is either satisfied, or one leaves. It may be true that nobody is indispensible in life, but expendibility is a little more comfortable in the usa. I hope the roof holds up.
Post a Comment
<< Home