It's Been a Very Busy Time in Senegal So Far
I'll get to the welding part in a minute ...
After I arrived on the disrupted flight from New York, Fiona and I immediately set out for Keur Soce, the village area where we do our work for Andando.
It's a long trip and not easy, five hours, into the interior of the country. We have a rig in Senegal for our organization, so we could go as we pleased, without having to depend on public transportation or rented vehicles, etc.
We got there around 4:00 in the afternoon, and went to visit one of our gardens, with a new solar well system in the village of Keur Niene Serere. It was a proud moment to see this new garden in full bloom with dozens of ladies working hard watering and tending to the vegetables.
These gardens are life changing for the village ladies. Not only do they now have an abundance and variety of healthy vegetables to eat and feed their family, they have a surplus they can sell to augment their minimal income. It's a win-win.
Unfortunately, that night while preparing for bed, the front door lock broke. It's a metal door and it has a pretty cheap lock. These Chinese made African locks are weird and crummy, and even on a good day, they don't work very well. We never got the thing to work, so we finally had to go to bed without a very secure door.
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This is the Base House that we Built in Keur Soce |
The next morning was busy preparing for a school supply distribution of textbooks, backpacks, pencils, workbooks and other supplies. Even with all hands on deck, this took a while, there are over 250 students that we support at one of the many schools we work with.
The rest of the day was consumed with a team meeting with our staff and visiting some more of the gardens we have established - they are generally working extremely well (with a few challenges).
Around midday we went to a somewhat distant location to investigate a future potential solar well garden.
Late afternoon for lunch with one of the local families. In the evening we went to the nearby "city" of Kaolack, for a new lock (to replace the faulty one on the front door of our base house), some plumbing parts, more school supplies, dinner, and internet access.
The next day was supposed to be a short day with an early departure for a long trip to the north of the country. We went to deliver the supplies we had prepared to the school and it was a blast! A lot of joy involved! I could write an entire blog post about that experience.
We met with our staff one last time and then back to the base house to load up for departure up north.
As we finished and were preparing to leave, the door lock again "malfunctioned". The key got stuck and the whole thing fell apart. Frankly, it was a worthless piece of garbage and indeed was already a replacement for one that had failed earlier. But with proper foresight we had bought a new one (of much better quality). We had to hold up our departure so we could install the new one and secure the house.
Unfortunately, the old lock was welded to the metal door. It was not fixable after several attempts to repair it, and it had to come off. The conversation went something like this:
"How do you replace this lock on the door, it's welded in place?"
- "You have to take it to a welder"
"You mean he comes out here to fix it?
- "No, you have to take it to him"
"How do you take this to a welder?"
- "You remove the door from the hinges, and you take the entire door down to the welder and he will weld on the new lock. Then you come back and install the door back in place"
"This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of"
But since we had a long way to go, and were burning daylight, we did exactly that and put the door in the back of the truck and went down to the local welder in the village. He knew precisely what to do (like something he does every day), and soon we were back in business.
I was highly skeptical of the whole thing, but the door went back into place very nicely and we started up the rig and off we went to the north of Senegal!
Next stop Saint Louis (Senegal) and Podor.
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