The Juba Construction Site

I have been touring real-estate to rent for the company.  Juba is under a massive amount of construction at the moment and much of what I have looked at is under the process of being built.  I took a few years out of my career to work construction and know the building code and safety codes really well in Ontario.  

Construction sites in Juba are very rustic.  Ladders are not approved and have no certification on them.  How could they when they are made of old pieces of wood tied together with twine!  

Welding is typically done with no mask.  Who needs a welder, when you can buy an old transformer, some jumper cables and find a hook up to city power?  No wonder the power is always browning out and flicking off!  By the way power failures happen at least 5 times a day.  I don’t even flinch now when the lights go out.

Workers don’t have tape measures.  I was at a local site last week and needed to measure a room.  The fore men pulls out a rope with meters marked out with marker.  I later watch many of the other workers using this method also.

Nothing is level, straight or plum.  This is because most things are done by eye.  I have never seen a level or a square on a construction site yet but I have seen the workers using a plum bob.  Some of the buildings being constructed are leaning so bad, I can easily see the lean from the road.

Electricians wire by trial and error.  I have watched now 3 guys wiring boxes, while live and electrocute them selves.  These guys are real men because they are getting 220V shocks, not the usual 120V we would get in Canada!  Some switches work properly, while others are dead, plugs are scattered around the room sometimes at floor level, sometimes 6 feet up the wall.  

When I worked construction, we typically had a few beers to celebrate the completion of a project.  But my boss never put on a party like I walked into last week!   The guys were in the process of slaughtering a goat in one of the rooms that were just completed.  The goat carcass was hanging from a rope, with its innards hanging from its body.  Fly’s were all over the goat and the guys were light a fire on a tiled courtyard they just completed.  Blood was soaking into the grout of the tile.  The foreman told me “Don’t worry the blood stains will come out!”