high rise

Just a quick note. They're building another high rise apartment just behind my building (we're on the 8th floor, the top). The construction sites around Dar are interesting to me, because they look like they use wood to prop up the concrete - but the wood isn't cut straight or organized, and there's a lot of corrugated sheet metal involved as well. But they're everywhere, and the city really is being built up, as well as out. I really don't know anything about building...

but I do know that you don't usually haul re-bar for making concrete up a 10-story building with a rope. You use a crane. As I've been sitting in my room today working, I have seen at least 6 rounds of re-bar go up, maybe 40 feet long and in bundles of 5 or 6. I've seen the guy who looks to be either pulling them or operating the pulley, and I hear a lot of commotion every time they tie more on or get more up to the top.

I don't write this to say "wow, construction in Africa is SO different!" Rather just "wow". There is so much new high-rise construction in Dar, and I have a new respect for how it gets done, and why it's in progress for a lot longer. There's more to it than that, especially when you read snarky comments in the guidebooks about things never being finished. I'm just sort of humbled by the amount of work (and all the more impressed with brother C). I think that's it.

I do, however, wish that I knew how to say "hey, could you nail that piece of sheet metal down? The racket is driving me crazy!" in Swahili. But I'm meeting with a potential Swahili teacher in a few minutes...we shall see.