There’s a road in our neighborhood that is currently undergoing some serious repairs and construction. I don’t know if they replaced the water lines that run under it, or what exactly, but they basically ripped up the entire road and installed new pipes and man-holes.
We arrived shortly after they started replacing the man-holes, and they were constructed at a level probably 10 inches higher than the road itself, which seemed ridiculous to me. There were piles of bricks and sand lining the road. I thought maybe they were planning on putting in a cobblestone road (because, in my mind, as an American, what else would you possibly do with bricks on a road?), but that would really impractical, overly tedious, and kind of stupid, considering how much traffic this road would normally get, when you could just lay asphalt. Plus, you’d have to do like five layers of cobblestone streets just to reach the manhole covers.
Unending piles of bricks and sand
We walk this road every day with Athena because, due to the construction which makes it impassable, there are no cars. So we’ve been able to see how they are progressing in building up the road to the level of the man-holes.
Luckily for everyone, they are not, in fact, laying down a cobblestone street. Instead, there are men that chop up the bricks by hand, and then the smashed bricks are laid on the road and covered with sand. Each layer gets well-trodden by pedestrians and rickshaws, and then another layer of bricks and sand goes down on top. And so forth and so on until the road almost reaches the level of the man-holes, at which point I would imagine they will pave it (but I don’t know because they haven’t progressed that far yet).
Breaking the bricks into pieces the hard way
Brick pieces mixed with sand, almost reaching the top!
Also, we have seen no power tools being used in the construction of this road. All the work is being done with hammers and wheelbarrows. Maybe that explains why it’s taking so darn long. Why use electricity or fuel when you have pure manpower?
According to Athena 