Friday 20 March 2015

16th March, 2015. Monday. The roof is going on already.




The carpenter has almost finished the timber on the roof at Nemasu, so corrugate is needed today.  Steve, Kebba and I set off for Nemasu, leaving Fontou cleaning the house.  We stopped to buy faceboard for the verandah and left Kebba to have it delivered by horse cart; whilst Steve and I went off to buy corrugate and look for tiles for the floor.  Shopping is relatively easy if you have transport here; shops in the main commercial area are concentrated into like kinds.  All the builders merchants are clustered around Kanifing, and so that is where we headed for corrugate and tiles.  We have built up a relationship with some of the suppliers and so we went straight to Metallum for the corrugate as they have the most choice and give the charity discount.  We loaded the corrugate and then went to look at the price of tiles this year.  The cost of living here is rising rapidly and all goods have increased this year, especially anything which is imported.  We found some tiles nearly the same colour as the existing verandah at Nemasu and ordered them for later in the week.  We managed to return to Nemasu in time for the carpenter to start on the corrugate and then returned home.  We were expecting the plumber today as the new metal tower was ready and waiting for him on our flat roof, sure enough just after the appointed time, Boto arrived to plumb the tank into position on the metal tower.  Now we need the tower cementing to the roof and some damage to the floor and wall repairing, a job for Kebba when he has finished at Nemasu later this week.
Steve and I went to Neils’ bar for dinner and tried again to get on the internet, but because of all the power cuts the back up batteries at Neils’ have not yet recharged.
We returned home to find Kebba and two helpers moving the sand which had been delivered outside our gate onto the roof.  One filling buckets, one outside the front of the house and Kebba on the roof with a rope, pulling the buckets up one by one from the second guy.  All preparation for the repairs needed later.
We spent the evening at home, again with no power, but the generator has been fixed so we can at least have a back up supply now.

No comments:

Post a Comment