Today we arrived on site to be met by our team of local colleagues, who we are now starting to get to know quite well. After the daily task briefing led by Evariste, Simon and Jack, Naila volunteered to lead the daily warm-up routine and chose to sing and dance the hokey-kokey – everyone soon lost their inhibitions and enjoyed themselves hugely!
The teams then split up, with Jack, Anna and Skye leading on tasks in the fabrication yard and working with the local bridge committee to share setting-up skills and using power tools to drill and fix the bridge components. Simon, along with Evariste from B2P, went off site to source some additional timber, while Holly, Matt, Dan and Tim took to the detailed task of launching the bridge deck.
We believe this is the first time this particular launch method has been used on a B2P bridge in Rwanda. We launched the first 10 crossbeams, a third of the total number. We should be in a position to start decking tomorrow!
At the same time, the local team continued to fill the abutments with rocks.
Watching the local bridge committee learning new tasks, asking questions and gaining in confidence is giving us a real sense of pride and satisfaction – after all, we are building this bridge to last and sharing our engineering knowledge will allow for this.
In other news, we saw a black kite soaring above our site all day today, and provided Naila with the perfect opportunity to share photos and videos of red kites in Scotland.
Serugeme Bridge 