So today was D-Day for building the masts of the pirate ship. And I certainly feel wounded.
18 hours later, me and my appointed helper finished the masts. We started at 6 am and finished at midnight, so needless to say it was a long day. Fortunately though we did finish, and we are ready for the boom truck to come tomorrow so we can place them. I do feel bad for my helper though. His name is Samsinga and he lives about an hour and a half away (more by bus no doubt), and so he is staying here in a boarding house while he works. But work is so hard to find and he has a family to support, so even with reasonable carpenter skills he makes 900 Rupees for the first 8 hours of his day, and 150 an hour in overtime. So for our grueling 18 hours of lifting, pounding nails and drilling for bolts, he made 2400 Rupees or $22.22 US Dollars. Ouch. To make things worse he asked me what my job in the US was, and because of his VERY limited english I was only able to say that I ‘play billiards’ for a job. And make as much in a day as he does after10 days of normal labor. The rest of the walk back to Samudra Sri was awkward. Possibly because we had nothing to talk about anyways, but that didn’t help.
Anyways, Emerson stopped by to check on the work and took a picture of me drilling the large holes for our bolt system on one of the crossbeams of the middle mast. (The picture is maybe too small to see, but at full size, you can see that the label on the barrel says ‘POISON’. Comforting.)
'Safety: First, Last and Always' is our motto..
I started with the middle mast first since it would be the largest, and why not get that over with, right? It’s the heaviest, although that’s not to say that the others are light by any means. I’d say they all weigh in the neighborhood of 1200-ish pounds. (It took 5 guys to tilt one end up the height of a barrel. And since no one wanted to put it back down and risk killing themselves, it still sits on that barrel.)
A quick shot of me, and it was only lunch time..
I think the sawdust brings out my eyes..
The early part of the day was good. Hot, but relatively problem free. And I would like to emphasize ‘hot’. By 1 pm I had drank a gallon of water, and just finished another water bottle which puts me at about 2.5 gallons for the day. All of this, and I’ve gone to the bathroom once. Suffice it to say, I was drenched. But as I said it was mostly problem free, which is quite the accomplishment here..
Foolishly I forgot to take a picture with all of the finished masts, (Although our poorly setup lights wouldn’t do them justice anyways) but here is one after the completion of the middle mast, and the start of the front mast (seen to the right). It measures 30ft tall and 20 feet wide at the bottom crossbar. 12 feet at the top crossbar.
Notice we left it on the barrel. Would YOU move it?
Anyways, I’ll be sure to take plenty of pictures tomorrow, as this impending circus is sure to be entertaining..
G’night All
-Brad
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