It’s hard, hot work in the tropical summer heat. He makes it look so easy. Up, down, up, down, dip the roller in the bucket and repeat. Nothing to it.
It’s all in the balance, muscles and coordination.
We often marvel at the easy grace of the local construction workers, performing difficult jobs with little or no equipment. Most worksites in Mexico would cause pulse-pounding night sweats for American OSHA or Canadian WCB safety inspectors.
Scaffolding created
out of lengths of wood, used and reused for every job site.
Ladders nailed together in varying lengths
and sizes, the steps a combination of wide, narrow, skinny, and thick.
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| My favourite ladder photo! |
Bracing, cobbled together from more bits and
pieces of lumber, concrete blocks for levelling, and wire to tie the whole mess
together.
Our expressions of concern over
their choices of equipment are met with good-natured grins, laughter. “No
problemo.”
Concrete work is tedious. The sand, water and cement are mixed usually by hand or sometimes with a portable mixer. Then tendon-popping, ligament-straining twenty-litre buckets are filled, handed up overhead and lifted again to the next set of hands, and re-lifted to the top of the structure.
Many workers are barefoot or wear ninety-nine-cent plastic sandals or flip-flops.
Work gloves? Eye protection? Dust masks? Hard hats? No, no, no, and definitely no.
When our house and several of the houses along this road were built, the contractor instructed the workers to dig down to the bedrock before pouring the foundation. Some of the excavations went down eleven, twelve, thirteen, and for one house sixteen feet to find a firm base for the foundations.
It’s a pretty good bet these houses will withstand a direct hit by a
hurricane; however, watching the guys dig the holes, I could hardly stand
it. There were no reinforcements of any
kind. 
The part of my brain that stores
the little bits of useful or sometimes useless trivia to do with safety, first
aid, and cave-ins was spinning at 70000 RPM, looking for info on what to do if
the walls collapsed.
Thankfully, the
information was not needed – this time.
I know I have said it before, but Mexico reminds
us so much of Canada in the 1950s and 60s, before workplace safety
regulations, before OSHA and WCB, when we too were casually indifferent to our
safety.
Now, we worry and fret about
these guys, many of whom have become good friends.
They are dads, and brothers, nephews, and sons. Good guys, nice guys, hardworking guys.
Hopefully, their balance, muscles and coordination will keep them safe.
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| Even pets have good balance and coordination |
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