Stumps & More Stumps

Zoom of rock inside stump
These two pics show how some of the roots have grown around the rocks to the point where the rock is completely enclosed within the roots and becomes part of the tree stump. Getting a stump like this out becomes an even harder job as the difference between rock and root is not always clear. This of course also adds to the weight of the stump



Stump with rock inside
This pic shows the whole stump with the rock inside. Although the rock seems small, it becomes apprent on closer inspection that the roots are relatively thin around the rock and conceals the largest part of the rock.
Pile of stumps from 2 days
Today I started moving the tree stumps from the site to the house. Large part of the reason is to remove the temptation for people to go onto the site when we're not there to remove this all as firewood, the lack of which is a large problem in Rwanda as cutting of trees is against the law (to minimise soil erosion). There are still a few stumps on the site but they have proved impossible to move by even 4-5 guys except if we chop them up. Don't really want to chop them up yet as we may use them around the site in the final stages.

No work was done yesterday due to the Gacaca trials (community based Genocide trials).
Today: we intended to only have 20 people again for today but we started off with some bad news that 2 guys had been arrested for inconsistant evidence during the Gacaca trials (the community based Genocide trials) which is a 3month prison term.

There were, as expected, a lot of people we didn't employ on Wednesday so there wasn't a shortage on the labour front. We had decided that for this 2nd day of employment for the new labour, we would be reasonably lenient on people arriving late. Andy explained to the ones who were very late that unfortunately they would have to come back again on Monday. At the end of the day, Andy explained that as of Monday we would only employ the people who are there on time. During this little talk I discovered that there was actually a Rwandan saying that refers to "keeping time like a mzungu" i.e. being precise with timekeeping like a white man.

The guys worked superbly and large areas were "un-stumped" with some minor trees also starting to get the chop, nothing over 10cm diameter yet though. I sustained a bit of a back injury whilst carrying a tree stump and stepping in a hole and trying to keep my balance. Hopefully I can get it sorted by Monday with some rest over the weekend. A ittle bit of stretch/exercise may help so I'll try and get some pics of the areas done today.

The wood for the fence of iron sheeting was also delivered today, so the fence should be up with iron sheeting by Tuesday morning and the site will officially look like a construction site.