The drivers had to dump the load of gravel into the river and then try to lever it out. We then got into a tricky situation when we signed an agreement to pay half the cost to the local government to fix it. It still isn’t fixed 2 weeks after the contractors promised it. We can’t move any quarry or hardware materials to our villages until it’s sorted. It’s been very dodgy for a long time, so it had to happen. But still, more frustrations!
Ahhh my project seems to take two steps backwards as soon as it takes one forward. We recently got an audit done of the program, and our engineer uncovered about 50 houses in the first two villages ARC built in, where the septic tanks were made of concrete and brick, and never actually finished. They used a ‘traditional’ design where there is no floor in the tank – which means the shit goes directly into the soil without proper filtration! And while soakaways were supposed to be attached to these tanks for the effluent, the completion of these was left to the community, including filling them with self-procured gravel and sand. So of course, they neglected to do this, and in some cases used them for other purposes like garbage dumps.
So now we have to go back and fix this problem. And it ain’t cheap. We have decided to replace the old tanks with new fibreglass ones, and fill in the soakaways. My budget was already looking shabby, not to mention my timeline totally overshot by at least three months.
I might be here until the end of 2058, not 2008!
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