Monday, September 11, 2006
A new wall at DA
Well, it's Monday morning. Each Monday I head over to DA with Jane and the kids (Jonathan and two of our neighbors). They go to school. I go to participate in a weekly prayer meeting with the Director and Board Exec Committee. While I was there today, I thought I'd take a couple shots of the construction under way right now. (Gee, is there anything else in my life at the moment?)
We're redoing the walls on both sides of the DA property and eventually along the main road, too. Monsieur Thiam has started with his crew on the alley side, the right or north wall. They have torn down the wall all the way back past the elementary building. There is a zinc construction barrier up and you see piles of sand and gravel everywhere! But the project is moving right along. They’ve got good foundations up all along that section now. And several concrete posts. They’ve even started laying brick, I saw today.
The old wall was crumbling in that section anyway, but the real motivation is security in a 9/11 world. This wall will be quite solid, meant to stop a car ramming it or absorb a bomb blast. Those of us who’ve been around a while have a hard time with getting too serious about this, but the DA community (parents and staff) as a whole agrees with the Embassy point of view that we have to do what we can.
I will miss the open, friendly face that this 10 foot wall will erase. The guards (like Dominique here), for the moment, won’t change. They are not the most military-looking crew, but they have done a fair job of catching thieves over the years.
