Been a really a tiring day. Africans just like too much work.
Woke up at 6:30am even though I slept after 2am again. I tried going back to sleep but the sleep wouldn’t come. Got up finally at 6:50. I did my normal morning exercise. I came online to check on my messages and check on my laptop. Around 8:30am m, a steel bender called me about a job and asked me to meet him. I told him I was getting ready so I will call him when I’m done.
I quickly got some food to eat, brushed my teeth and had my bath. I called him back at 9 to tell him I was ready. He asked me to meet him so I left the house. We met at Pantang Junction, I sat in his car and we were on our way. We picked up another worker on our way and we all went there. The place was quiet far, considering he had his own car and there was no traffic, we drove for 30 minutes. Where we were going was Adoteiman.
It was my first time so I was being taught how to go about almost everything. I was thought how to straighten iron rods, how to cut them and how to mesh (don’t know if that’s the right term) them. I took a few pictures when nobody was looking at me because I didn’t want anyone saying I was being lazy and spending the time on my phone whiles there was work to be done. Because we were late to the site, we didn’t really go on a break. When you want to piss or eat, you take sometime off and do that, but you get right back to work when you are done. It was a great learning experience and the one teaching me took his time to take me through everything.
Whiles doing the mesh, I realized the other guy I was working with was quicker when it came to cutting the thing iron strips we used for the mesh. I knew I was new, so that can be the reason for me being slow, but the rate at which he was moving was extremely fast for me. When he went on break, I took his cutter to work with it. I realized his was much sharper and I didn’t need to apply a lot of energy to cut the mesh unlike the cutter I was using. I loudly complained and said, “now I know the reason why the work has been so difficult for me. My cutter is blunt and so I have to use a lot of strength when cutting”.
The person who invited me for the job only said, “you should manage, the good cutters are expensive, and what you are using is also what I’ve been using. When you get used to the cutter, you will be able to move fast”. At the end of the day, there was blisters on my palms and my palms ached. I wasn’t tired from all the work we had done, but my hand ached like crazy. I had a few cuts and bruises on my right palm which I used to hold the cutter. I got home almost 7pm. I ate dinner and had my bath. I couldn’t wash well as I couldn’t hold my sponge firmly. I do hope I feel better by tomorrow since he called me about another job tomorrow morning. I do hope tomorrow is easier, or I’m more capable to go through it tomorrow. I was dark when I went to work in the morning and now I think I’m fully black. Not just a shade of it.
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Where I was today.
