The Continuing Adventures of Cap'n Transit

                Thus far Cap’n Transit has adjusted well to the recruitment of his new band of merry men. Each of the mateys has proven his worth as we have tackled many beasts along our voyage. This morning began with the classic, obnoxious brick-phone ringtone startling me awake to an unsettling conversation with our translator that not only has our welder decided not to answer his phone/come to the work site, but that our generator guy, who we are relying on to power all of our welding equipment, has gone MIA. So I skip the shower, bang on the others doors and let them know we have some work to do before we can go and do the work we need to work on. Finding a generator in downtown Musanze within an hour of waking was a great start to the rest of our day. Bussing up to our work site there are half a dozen welders working alongside the road, not using the classic MIG or TIG machines, but using a stick welder with a rubber strap for a clip, two large hand-rolled coils nailed between two pieces of wood for a transformer, and a stripped wire leading somewhere to the back of a house hooked up to who knows what kind of power source. Jacque, who seems to be the Don of Cyanika, found us one of the local welders and we finally began work on our roofs. After deliberating thoroughly how we were going to lift the trusses up four meters onto the top of the columns, we were able to easily hand them up to our workers on the scaffolding. The scaffolding is made of local tree trunks and old column form work. It gets the job done. (As Health and Safety Officer of the trip I approve the scaffolding.  I’m qualified to make that judgment.) Over the next two days we were able to acquire a second welder which quickened our pace with the roof substantially. With the completion of welding the purlins and trusses at Gasebya we are now able to start making headway on the monster roof of Nyarutosho. We had gotten off to a rough, sluggish start with delays in material gathering and workers not following through, but with the recent progress we are hoping to follow in the same path as our first trip. We have the ball rolling now. So after a few days of hard work we’re taking a night to get our laughs out on Salka’s heritage and enjoy some Celtic Cola’s with one of new local friends named Bosco.

Celtic Cola  -  Classic American Coke with Irish Guinness, found in the heart of Africa. Don’t ask questions, just drink it.