Tad's Life

I’ve spent a bit of time with the books and with handing out money in the last couple days. But I’ve also gotten to play electrician. We have been doing some major stuff to the dormitory this week. But we had a deadline. The young singles from the big AG church here in Dakar were supposed to have a two day outing today and tomorrow. We were replacing and reinstalling the louvered windows after painting the bedrooms last week. We were also installing new screens all along the alleyway, on the back of the building. Unfortunately, that required some cement work (messy) and late yesterday afternoon the maids were hounding us to get done so they could get in and clean! Guests were coming in the morning!

Of course, with a group of young people, we should know better. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon and we still have seen neither hide nor hair of them! All that stress for nothing.

And, of course, the electricity company added to our adventure. All those screens (16 in total) needed holes drilled in them and in the wall to mount them. Pierre Marie interrupted my peanut butter sandwich lunch with word that the dormitory had no electricity. Hm… We had it at the house. The office had it. So, I left my bread toasting and went over to have a look. Immediately, I remembered that the masons had exposed some wires the week before and had had to redo a section of plastic conduit (yes, under that new cement in the photo!). Well, I jumped right in and eliminated a couple of other possibilities and moved the circuit breaker to a more convenient place while I was at it. I asked Jean if Albert, the mason who fixed that patch, knew anything about electricity. You can guess the answer! I also rigged up a long extension cord from the breaker out to Pierre Marie so he could start drilling in the meantime. Then I spent most of the afternoon reworking and jerry-rigging the electric wiring in the dorm to keep from having to ask the masons to open up that wall again when we had guests coming in less than 24 hours. Of course, testing my modifications got difficult when the electric company cut power again. And that also made drilling holes kind of tough. We had to abandon the hammer drill for the battery powered portable drill. But in the end, sweaty and dirty though I was, I took care of electric stuff while Pierre Marie mounted his screens and Patrice fixed the louvered windows and Jean and his masons reworked the window frames out back. We even got done in time for Yvette and Rosette to get the place cleaned up.

// posted by Tad @ 1:25 PM