Craftskills guys – Davies and Morgan had planned to come from Nairobi once the structure was up, so they could help us to properly install the generator, blades and tail. However, since we were slightly behind schedule, they arrived the day after alex and I had finished with the enormous hole (good timing eh)? They took a Matatu – 14 passenger vans used for a bus service through the country – vans that love to fly over the crater potholes I told you about - to Homabay The trip should only take about 6hrs on a matatu, versus the 12 hrs it took us on the school bus. Unless, of course your particular matatu decided to overtake a truck on a bridge that wasn’t wide enough and get stuck. It took Davies and Morgan 13 hrs to get to Homabay – they win.
Davies and Morgan arrived the day on time to lay the foundation. Good thing they did too. Alex, Mark, Duan and Jason all stayed behind at the hippobuck to pre-assemble the tower (which must have been a site for the other guests to see a 30 ft steel tower laying across the lawn and 4 white people, with white shirts gone black with grease and dirt working on it each day). As I believe I’ve explained before, Davies and Morgan are from Craftskills – a small company based out of Nairobi that build windmills in and around Kenya for small villages. They both speak English (huge plus!) but neither spoke Luo (not such a plus). Fortunately, everyone in Kenya speaks kiswhili. Hakuna matata!! Via kiswhili, I had a translator for the day!! The foundation consisted of first filling the bottom with large rocks to help with settlement of the ground. Then we placed the first section of the tower into the hole, leveled it perfectly and tightened everything up. Once everything was in place, the concrete was poured and the tower leveled again. Morgan and Davies without a doubt made this job a 1000 times easier, so I need to take a moment and thank them.
In order to get the concrete materials to the site (water, sand, aggregate, and cement), they were brought up the hill by children on bicycles and donkeys. I’m in Kenya…
Mr. Johnson and Morris over saw the concrete mixing, which was done by guest-imating the proportions of water/aggregate/cement/sand ratio and mixing it with a shovel in a large pile, on the ground. Barefooted. When the concrete was poured, the I turned to barefooted Morris and suggested he wash his feet off as soon as possible. We finished just enough time to beat out the daily 6:30pm rain.
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