A shelf for Rebecca

Please understand:  When I describe a situation or the way things are done here, it is not to be condescending, critical, to make fun of, or even elicit sympathy.  It is so that those who are reading this can have an understanding of some of the cultural differences, and hopefully gain some insight into the challenges others are faced with.

As you read this and other posts, you may also find it helpful to understand the currency.  Here we use Cameroon francs, or cfa.  The exchange rate is about 485 cfa to the dollar, to keep the math simple we figure 500.  The denomination of the bills are 10000, 5000, 2000, 1000, and 500, and the coins I’ve seen are 500, 200, 100, 50, and 25.

I didn’t bring any tools on this trip.  My though was ‘I am here for training, so I won’t need them.’  (And with the six pairs of shoes, 14 pair of underwear, many pairs of socks, slacks, dress shirts, ties, black sport coat (he said in an email ‘bring clothes for sport’, I had to be sure), jeans, t-shirts, three hats, a power strip and extension cord, games, etc.  There just wasn’t room.)  Beth wanted to bring a multitool, but we ran out of time, so we brought a Chinese army knife instead.  It’s like a Swiss army knife, but it’s dull, and when you use it everything on it loosens up.  Never the less, with it I have reversed the hinges on the refrigerator door, repaired the sink drain*, and shaved our laundry soap, among other things.

So Rebecca wanted a shelf to help organize her kitchen and free up the four feet of counter space used to dry and store all the dishes and cutlery, cut vegetables, boil water in the electric kettle, etc.  A project right up my alley, so I asked Jonas if he had a hammer and saw.  “I have a hammer, but not a saw, but it is no problem; you just take your measurements to the place where you buy the wood, and they will cut it for you there.” he replied.  Okay, I have to have a detailed plan, not my style, but I drew one up and made a list of materials.  We got on the motorbike he borrowed from a friend to get the wood.  I didn’t bring the camera, so I will describe it the best I can:

We arrived at the wood seller’s where planks are neatly stacked under a corrugated metal roof.  The wood is cut very rough and only available in six meter lengths.  (Yes, six meters, over 19-1/2 feet for each board.)  I chose four pieces; a ‘1x12’, a ‘1x4’, and two pieces that approximated ‘2x3’s.  12,000 cfa.  Jonas had also told me “they have a machine to make it very smooth.”  Turns out that machine was somewhere else, and that I would have to pay someone to take it there.  The boards were made ready for transport, and I turned to buy some nails.  ½ kg nails, 300 cfa.  When I turned back the wood was gone and we got on the motorbike to follow it to the machine.  We soon caught up to the wood, not on a cart as I expected, but on the head of a man carrying it, straining under its weight and sweating profusely.  It clack, clacked the approximately five blocks, including through a busy traffic circle, to the place where the machine for smoothing was.  That place, in what appeared to a former barnyard; about an acre with three sides consisting of covered ‘stalls’, now mostly filled with cars in various states of disrepair, save for the corner where the ‘mill works’ was.  Our guy carried the wood there, and I paid him.  500 cfa.  The mill works consisted of a ‘table saw’, and, as we soon discovered behind a wall and down an embankment outside, the planer.  The table saw is a 10” blade mounted in the middle of a metal plate welded to a two inch angle iron frame, and driven by an industrial sized motor.  The ‘fence’ was a piece of 2x4 rectangular steel tubing, mounted only to the feed end by a couple of bolts welded together and threaded to the frame of the table to allow adjustment.  The saw never stopped the entire time we were there, but it was sharpened several times, as well as eventually adjusted to make our cuts.  (Sharpening is taking what is left of a metal cut off wheel and holding it to the edge of the blade as it turns to make it sharp again.)  Except for sharpening and our cuts, the saw was continuously being used to make structural ‘2x4’s.  Two guys, barefoot in about 18” of sawdust, feeding those six meter boards through, ripping them down to the smaller dimension.  Meanwhile we heard the planer start up, time to smooth our boards.  The planer is an old industrial model, covered in rust from being outside, with a 14” bed and the drum, pulleys, and belts all exposed.  Thickness adjustment comes by way of prying the bed up, or banging it down and inserting a wedged piece of wood to hold it in place.  The first boards were the smaller ones, running them through till I said it was okay, and they ended up relatively smooth, with two sides nearly parallel, and approximately the same thickness their entire length.  Then it was time for the big board.  I guess he decided he could get one side in one pass, so that’s where he set the bed.  Attempting to feed it from over nineteen feet away he couldn’t get it started, but no worries, there was help nearby.  Between the two of them, they were able to get the board started, but almost immediately it was apparent (to me) they were trying to take too much material.  Push harder.  At this point the guy closest to the machine was leaning and pushing for all he was worth, and I had visions of him slipping and landing his forehead on the drum.  Apparently his partner had similar visions, because he pulled him back further from the machine.  They got help from another guy and, after stopping the drum several times, with smoking belts and pulleys, eventually got the board all the way through.  Albeit with several chunks missing and a few rough spots where the blades weren’t spinning quite fast enough.  The other side was easy; just flip the board and run it through.  Now it to the table saw.  We waited awhile, but after another sharpening and the frequent splash of used motor on the blade for cooling, we had most of one edge off of each board.  Next, cut the boards to length, to the chop saw.  Well, the same guy that ran the planer holding an 18” hand saw, but it’s like a chop saw.  Using the small household tape measure (marked in inches and centimeters, but missing the first 20 cm and the end stop), a square, and my measurements, he laid out the wood for cutting.  The only interruption came when the tape recoiled into its case and had to be disassembled for recovery.  The cuts were made pretty quickly, and his job complete, he was ready for payment.  2500 cfa.   Except, since he couldn’t make change for the 3000 I at first gave him, 2000 became sufficient.  Also, for the nearly 1-1/2 hours we were there one man was carrying those big six meter timbers from a stack in the yard and restacking them near the saw.  With the wood strapped on we were a six foot wide motorbike, but it was an uneventful ride home, and an hour later Rebecca had her shelf.

*Including making two flip flop gaskets:  Finding the sole of a discarded flip flop and cutting out a new drain flange gasket.  The standard way of doing it that Larry and I learned in Uganda.

Jonas' hammer