Big Bad Wolf Meets Big Bad Fundis
January 25, 2006, Wednesday. 11:38am.
The wind blew the aluminum sheet roofing off the VCT last night. Well, not completely off. One side was still attached to the top beam and the rest was flapping up and down like a huge Japanese fan beckoning to someone in the tea fields behind the building. We rounded up a couple guys in the trading center to help us tie it back down. As I speak they are standing around the building like Liliputians holding down the giant while they wait for someone to go fetch nails to secure the ropes.
A couple days ago a building collapsed in Nairobi, killing more than ten people and injuring hundreds. I saw white people on the Kenyan news for the first time in a long time, American and Israeli soldiers who had flown in to join the rescue efforts. It was a multi-story building that had been constructed using metal beams that weren’t designed to support the weight of a multi-story building. People speculate that the construction company was bribed to use low-quality materials that could be quickly and easily assembled into a sub-standard building, maybe under political pressure to complete the structure in a short amount of time. There are other buildings in Nairobi constructed of the same materials, including a large estate that is home to hundreds of families. (An estate in Kenya is like a gated community, I think.)
People in my village are muttering about the shoddy construction job that went into building the VCT. (You can see and hear the roof flapping from the trading center.) There is a fundi (carpenter) who did most of the work, who people say got paid a lot of money to build our VCT in a hurry. My co-workers at the VCT have been complaining that a suspiciously hefty sum of money went into constructing the building, and 13 months later we’re starting to see exactly what we got (or didn’t get) for that price.
Post script: Saga to be continued...
The wind blew the aluminum sheet roofing off the VCT last night. Well, not completely off. One side was still attached to the top beam and the rest was flapping up and down like a huge Japanese fan beckoning to someone in the tea fields behind the building. We rounded up a couple guys in the trading center to help us tie it back down. As I speak they are standing around the building like Liliputians holding down the giant while they wait for someone to go fetch nails to secure the ropes.
A couple days ago a building collapsed in Nairobi, killing more than ten people and injuring hundreds. I saw white people on the Kenyan news for the first time in a long time, American and Israeli soldiers who had flown in to join the rescue efforts. It was a multi-story building that had been constructed using metal beams that weren’t designed to support the weight of a multi-story building. People speculate that the construction company was bribed to use low-quality materials that could be quickly and easily assembled into a sub-standard building, maybe under political pressure to complete the structure in a short amount of time. There are other buildings in Nairobi constructed of the same materials, including a large estate that is home to hundreds of families. (An estate in Kenya is like a gated community, I think.)
People in my village are muttering about the shoddy construction job that went into building the VCT. (You can see and hear the roof flapping from the trading center.) There is a fundi (carpenter) who did most of the work, who people say got paid a lot of money to build our VCT in a hurry. My co-workers at the VCT have been complaining that a suspiciously hefty sum of money went into constructing the building, and 13 months later we’re starting to see exactly what we got (or didn’t get) for that price.
Post script: Saga to be continued...
posted by Justina at 11:38 AM
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