Lumberswag

TL;DR: woodworking at Colin's, relations with Congo heating up.


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Of course, after last night the early wake up initiative failed for the first time in Uganda. We headed out late in search for more metal piping in another hardware store near the strip. We took it straight to Colin, who luckily was satisfied.

After that it was straight to work on producing the wooden bearings that would hold the drive shaft of the longtail motor in place. Three bearings, each consisting of two wooden blocks with semi-cylindrical cuts would need to be made. Ali and Kris headed to the wood stores to buy a plank of hardwood with Judith while I discussed bearing logistics with Colin. Surprisingly, I managed to convince him that there was a better way of designing them, making them easily replaceable for fishermen when they wore out!

Once the wood arrived, we got straight to sawing, hacking and planing away at the wood. It was a productive day, although at Ugandan rates. Let's just say with a bit more experience at this sort of handiwork, we could be a lot faster. And indeed, we did become a lot faster later in the project, by which time we'd learned how to use tools properly, like drills, angle grinders, chop saws etc.

Today was also interesting in that we saw a series of 15 buses heading down Bwamba road from the Rwenzoris. They were packed full of refugees from Congo. We checked out the headlines as well, which were unrelated but said M23 had attacked a locality near Kasese, where Kris and me were just a couple days back. Can't help but realize things aren't entirely chill around here.

peace