H&S – African style

The ‘Elf an’ Safety people in the UK (who are not actually as bad as Jeremy Clarkson and the Daily Mail would have you believe) would have a cadenza if they saw this on a building site over there.

In this image, you can gauge ground level from the guy in the bottom right corner of the photo. The gentleman in the yellow cap and his companion are busy rendering the outside of a newly-built house. But the two units of scaffolding that they’ve brought along to the job just doesn’t cut the mustard as far as height goes, so – in a typically African way – they have adapted the setup so that the mustard is cut.

For the record and in case you can’t see (although you can view a larger image here), here’s a detailed run down of what they are standing on:

  1. Four bricks, which are balanced on
  2. A plank, which is balanced on
  3. Four more bricks, which are balanced on
  4. Another plank, which is balanced on
  5. Two barrels (prevented from rolling by four more bricks), which are balanced on
  6. A third plank, which is balanced on
  7. Two units of scaffolding.

Thank goodness they are all wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets.

Seriously though, this does sum up one of the major differences I have noted over here. The willingness and ingenuity to make do with the materials available. In the UK, they’d still be waiting for two more units of scaffolding to be delivered to the site. (Or, yes, they may have been more organised in the first place and just brought 4 units out). Here, they just found a way of getting to where they needed to be and getting the job done.

I was just disappointed that they didn’t start juggling while they were up there.

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