Ingenuity

The Afghan contractors make do with what ever they have. I have not seen one contractor use an OSHA rated ladder on the job. The majority are made from scraps of 2x4s, see the picture above. This one was not only made from scraps, but it also was spliced together to make it taller or to repair it after it broke. The other picture shows a ladder made by Afghan Ready Mix. They don't have as much lumber, but they do have plenty of re-bar, so their ladder is made from that. That's the ladder leaning against the concrete barrier. It's a good thing most all of the Afghani's are thin, I'm not sure what the rating is on those ladders.

The paving contractor fired up the plant today, the rain finally quit and it dried out enough. I was watching them put it down today and thought I'd take a picture of the paving machine. We are paving a 24' width, the machine doesn't quite reach that far, so they shovel it out to the edges. Also the auger that pushes the asphalt out to the ends of the screed is short by about 3 feet on each side, so two guys have to shovel it out to the edges. The other picture shows the guide bar, which is a couple pieces of re-bar wired together. The driver of the paver uses this bar to follow the line for the edge of the pavement. Their guide bar was a little short of the line so they extended it with a little splinter of wood and tied a rock off to the end so the driver could use the rock to guide him along the line.

The one I like best was the little campfire I found at one of the job sites. The contractor built this little fire pit to heat the roof tar he was using to patch the roof on some new brick and mortar facilities. I didn't see how they were getting the tar up on the roof, I'm sure they were carrying it up the wooden ladder in a bucket.

In the military we call that contingency engineering - it may not be the best approach, but whatever works to get the job done.